by Evelyn James
Angelica had no friends in the district, so she rarely left the hall except to walk in the grounds. She was an anomaly in the neighbourhood. Too working class to be considered a fitting acquaintance for the other well-to-do families in the district, and risen too far above her station to make comfortable friendships with the ordinary folk. Angelica felt isolated; her son had been her only consolation and now he was gone too.
Clara was tempted to point out to her that Betty was in exactly the same situation and it might be worthwhile the two women banding together, but she did not want to risk Angelica taking offence and refusing to talk to her. Instead she helped her into her sitting room and drew the curtains at the tall windows.
Angelica’s rooms were in the older part of the hall, above Clara’s bedroom. They were decorated with the dark panelling the Howtons of the seventeenth century had preferred. However, her sitting room was heavily personalised, unlike many of the other family rooms Clara had seen. There was no sign of the Howton ancestors here. No old paintings or furniture, no random memorabilia from the past. Angelica had fitted the room out with new furniture at the time of her wedding. It was now over twenty years old, but looked fresh among the old world setting of panelled walls, and was certainly more up-to-date than anything else in the hall. She had chosen her own paintings for the walls and they were mainly watercolours in liquid hues of blues and reds. She liked floral images and landscapes. Even the rug on the floor was of English wool rather than an old Persian rug as was found everywhere else.
Angelica sat in a sagging but comfortable blue armchair by the fire. She let out a sigh of relief.
“Thank you,” she said.
Clara sat also, not waiting to be invited.
“You were going to tell me about your worst fears,” Clara reminded her.
Angelica gave another sigh and flicked away a tendril of hair that had fallen across her brow. She knitted her fingers together in her lap.
“I was hopeful it was not the case,” Angelica murmured. “But a terrible thing befell my son during the war.”
Clara tried not to appear too keen.
“I assume this was an especially terrible thing, considering the circumstances?”
“Yes, you might say that. Certainly lots of terrible things were happening during the war to a lot of poor young men. No, this was something else, something extraordinary,” Angelica gave a sad smile. “My sister-in-law talks a lot of rot, but she was correct about one thing. Harvey did travel extensively and was very curious about anything exotic, particularly anything involving the occult.”
Angelica frowned. She clearly didn’t like talking about such things.
“Harvey was always very concerned about death. I believe it was due to the sudden passing of his father when he was a little boy. It left him deeply unsettled and with this terror that people would suddenly disappear from his life. It was a terror that even as an adult he could not rid himself of. Harvey struggled with traditional religion. He was not so much interested in life after death, but rather how to prevent death altogether. His obsession with this notion took him to far flung places, talking to shamans and magicians from many cultures. Seeking the impossible, a cure for death,” Angelica’s expression was cautious, she was worried she was going to be laughed at. Clara said nothing. She wanted to know about this mysterious side of Harvey.
“When war came, Harvey’s obsession became almost impossible to control. Death was all around him and filled his waking thoughts. He confided in me his passion. I was shocked, naturally,” Angelica groaned to herself. “I tried to console him with words from the Bible, but he would have none of it. Harvey was determined to find a way to prevent death, effectively he was seeking immortality, but at that precise moment he was just trying to survive the war. How many old school friends had he seen die on the battlefield? Too many. I dare say he was also driven by a desire to outlive Richard. There was a strange atmosphere in the house during those years. We were all on tenterhooks for news, but there was this terrible competition between myself and Lady Howton. It was unspoken, but we were both waiting for the other’s son to die.
“Horrible, I know. I speak of it now and feel sick to my stomach over it. Maybe she does too. But it was how the war took us. Of course, if Richard died Harvey would become heir to the title. I suppose that was why I hoped he would be killed and why she hoped Harvey would die. In any case, they both survived. Just as well, I think, because if one of us had won that awful competition it would have eaten away at us forever.”
Angelica paused.
“My dear, there is some sherry in that cupboard. Might you pour me a glass? And please help yourself.”
Clara obeyed the request, though she declined a glass for herself. Once Angelica was suitably equipped with a drink, she continued her story.
“Harvey was fascinated by the commonwealth troops from Indian who served in the war, or rather he was fascinated by their various spiritual practices. He spent more and more time among them, learning about their gods and their folk magic. Eventually, he found someone who could offer him what he was looking for, a way to stop death,” Angelica almost hissed the last sentence, it seemed to take effort to spit it out. “The man was a Fakir, a religious teacher, but he knew a lot of old magic. Some of it forbidden. He told Harvey that he knew a spell that would prevent a man dying. It was dark magic, but it had an attraction to Harvey difficult to describe to any rational person. He could not resist.”
Angelica drained her sherry, she looked in need of the fortification.
“Harvey insisted the man cast his spell upon him. I don’t know the details, for Harvey did not care to describe them to me. I think he only told me about the spell because I was so concerned about the possibility of him dying and he wanted to reassure me. He was so pleased with himself for finding a way to defy death,” Angelica shook her head, still struggling to believe her son had been so foolish. “What he had to do to work that spell I dare not think. But work it they did. Harvey was ecstatic when he told me. He would never die! The Fakir had sworn it!
“Well, he was right, wasn’t he? He cannot die. His poor tormented soul shall never know peace because of that dark spell. I had hoped I was wrong, that it was some imposter at the window. I was not brave enough to get close enough to look for myself, but Betty had the courage, and now she has confirmed that it is my son standing in the garden night after night. My son, unable to die, and yet also dead. He has defied death, but at what cost?”
Angelica sunk her head into her hands and sobbed. Clara could not blame her for feeling so beaten. To imagine one’s loved one forever kept from the peace of the grave was a horrid vision. But Clara did not believe there was a magic powerful enough to stop death itself. If Harvey had defied death, it was by practical devices, not by witchcraft. She was careful when she spoke to Angelica not to make her disbelief too obvious.
“I would imagine there was a lot of talk about charms and spells that might prevent death during the Great War,” she said. “Death was very much on everyone’s minds. Harvey no doubt believed in that spell very strongly, maybe just by believing in his invulnerability he was kept safe?”
“You don’t think the spell was real? Even after what you saw downstairs?” Angelica persisted.
“I saw a man at the window,” Clara spoke plainly. “He resembled Harvey, but he was not dead. He sprinted across the garden far too well for a corpse. Besides, I saw the surprise on his face when he recognised Betty.”
Angelica stopped crying abruptly.
“He was surprised?”
“Yes. It was quite obvious. I don’t think a dead man would care that his secret wife had turned up at the house. Actually, I am going to persuade the Howtons to leave the terrace doors open tomorrow and invite the fellow inside. I would stake a shilling he won’t set foot through the door and risk standing in the glare of artificial light,” Clara was pleased with her idea. “I shall find out who is playing this terrible hoax on you all and defiling the mem
ory of your son. Rest assured on that.”
“That is most comforting,” Angelica bleated. “Oh dear, but I am so tired. Might I kindly ask you to leave now so I might rest?”
“Of course,” Clara rose from her chair. “Thank you for your honesty. I see now how someone might have concocted this whole scheme, basing it on your son’s interests in the occult to make it seem more authentic.”
“That would be a very wicked thing to do,” Angelica said miserably.
“Very wicked,” Clara agreed. “And, as yet, our culprit has not demonstrated what possible motive could have inspired such callousness. I suppose we shall find out soon enough.”
Clara let herself out of Angelica’s rooms and checked her watch. She doubted the family would have remained in the drawing room, in any case, she had no need to return. Not with the stranger in the dark long gone. She decided it was time to get some rest, to refresh her mind ready for the day ahead. There would be lots to be done come the morning. For a start, she had to set a suitable trap for this intruder. Once she had him ensnared, he would be revealed for what he was.
Of that, Clara was confident.
Chapter Twelve
Clara lay in her bed in the guest room and turned the pages of Harvey Howton’s diary. She had yet to find any stark revelations within it that might explain his, or someone else’s, reasons for pretending he had returned from the dead. It was filled with a great deal of bitterness and vitriol directed towards his half-brother and his family.
Harvey felt cheated by life and by his father. It wasn’t so much that he was the younger son of a lord and therefore unable to inherit the title. It was the fact that he was from a second marriage, a marriage viewed with derision and hate by those members of the family who felt they had the better pedigree and therefore a better claim to the Howton name. His brother was not so much the problem as was his wife. Lady Howton had resented the arrival of Angelica into the household. She had felt her place threatened.
The late Lord Howton had been a widower for many years and his daughter-in-law had stepped into the role of ‘lady of the house’ early on; taking charge of household affairs and running her father-in-law’s life. It had made her feel important and purposeful, especially when her first child had proved to be a girl and she realised she had failed to produce an heir.
Then Angelica had walked into the house unexpectedly. This woman of working class stock. She was presentable enough, but what did she know about running a lord’s household or the correct protocols for treating servants? None! She stumbled into the lives of them all and made a pig’s ear of nearly everything until she was corrected.
It was absurd! It was disgraceful! And all the future Lady Howton could do was bite her tongue and endure it all. She had felt thrust out, and the longer it went on without her producing a son, the more she felt threatened by this imposter who, at any moment, might produce an heir and compound her own failure.
There were dark days when both ladies fell pregnant within weeks of each other. For Angelica, her desperation to produce a baby boy was driven by her need to consolidate her position within the family. She still felt second class and needed to prove her worthiness to be there, to exist even.
For her rival the pressure was even worse. If Angelica produced a son where did that leave her? She had to produce an heir for her husband, a future Lord Howton. If Angelica succeeded where she could not, the shame would crush her.
Such unnecessary pressures governed the two women. As the weeks passed and their times grew near they were almost paralysed with anticipation and dread. Many years later, it was hard to imagine that terrible time, since the outcome was known and the fears seemed unfounded. But back then they were very real and were felt throughout the household. It was all there in Harvey’s diary. His mother had told him of that time and he had recorded her memories. According to Harvey, even the servants were brought to a state of despair over the drama, which only ended with the birth of Richard.
That should have been the end of it all, but, of course, Angelica gave birth to Harvey and so the rivalry remained. Anything that threatened the life of Richard instantly put Harvey into the spotlight. The slightest childhood cough put Richard’s parents into paroxysms of anxiety. Should Richard die, then Harvey would be the next heir to the title. It was unthinkable, and yet it was entirely possible, especially when Diana was born and hopes of a second direct heir were dashed. There were to be no more pregnancies after Diana. Harvey hinted that the birth had been so difficult that the doctors had told his brother his wife would never have any other children. Now all hope was placed on Richard.
What a burden to shoulder! And the rivalry of the parents now seeped into the children. Two boys so close in age they could be brothers, and yet divided by the impossible prejudices and hate of their parents. All through Harvey’s life there had been one overriding theme – should Richard die he would be heir. It had infected the boy with a morbid fascination for sickness and death. He had been trained to relish every illness Richard contracted, to anticipate his death with a disturbing excitement. Harvey confessed all this to the pages of his diary. He also confessed that it was only during the Great War, when death became an inevitable daily comrade, that he realised how sickening his preoccupations with Richard’s demise had been. He now came to resent his mother for instilling these dark horrors in him.
The realisation might have brought the two men together, brothers-in-arms as they were, but the deep strife between them ran too deep. It was a gulf impossible to overcome. They would be rivals, enemies even, until their dying days. There would be no compromise.
The diary contained Harvey’s gripes concerning the family. Some were genuine, others he had constructed from random events that were probably meaningless. He was so paranoid that anything someone said became an attack upon him, even when it was not. He heard whispers and assumed they were about him. He saw servants laughing and thought they laughed at him. Harvey’s entire life was driven by this deep-seated sense of inadequacy, of being the son of a stationmaster’s daughter. His mother might have married a lord, but even Harvey could not resist the idea that she had done so motivated purely by money.
What an unhappy man. Clara mused to herself. She closed the diary, having read through all but the final pages, and placed the book on the cabinet beside the bed. The clock on the wall stated that it was now past one o’clock in the morning. She was meant to be sleeping. Clara lay back on the pillow and wondered what life must have been really like for Harvey in this hall. Here he was, surrounded by a history that stemmed back centuries and of which he was a part, yet he was still an outsider, an anomaly. He could never quite place himself into the family’s shared history because he believed that all his ancestors would have resented him as much as his living relatives did. Driven by a mix of hate and insecurity, he had drifted to London for long spells to escape the claustrophobia of his family. His diary recorded those trips; he mainly went to night clubs, the newest craze to hit the city. He enjoyed the opportunity to disappear and become a nobody in such places. In one of them he met his wife, yet she too was absent from his diary. Strange that even his most private thoughts, when placed onto paper, appeared censored.
Had Harvey feared people getting hold of his diary?
Clara shut her eyes and tried to drift off, but her mind was racing. Why does anyone decide to fake their death? If, indeed, Harvey had faked his drowning that could only mean he wanted to finally escape this life and this world. He wanted to disappear for good, with no one to pursue him.
Then why come back and act as a living corpse? Revenge? To get back at the family who had spurned him so? Clara felt she was missing a piece of the puzzle. Something much more sinister was going on here, she had just stumbled in too early, before the real drama took place.
Clara was just about to turn over and try to go to sleep, when someone knocked on her bedroom door.
“Miss Fitzgerald?”
She recognised Richard’s voice.<
br />
“Just a moment,” Clara quickly rose and pulled on her slippers and donned her dressing gown. She knew before she opened the door that something had happened. That the next stage of the drama had begun.
“I am sorry to disturb you so late,” Richard apologised hastily as Clara appeared before him. “I think there is something you ought to see.”
He led her back downstairs, through the great hall and into the drawing room. The room was dark. Richard turned on the wall lights.
“We all went to bed not long after the commotion,” Richard explained. “None of us felt like staying up. The wind had been knocked out of us. I was having trouble sleeping, so I came back down here for my book. That was when I spotted those.”
His armed pointed to a spot behind the sofa. Clara’s eyes had already been drawn in that direction because the door to the terrace was open. She could not recall if she had shut it behind her when she raced back in, but surely the family would have closed it before going to bed? The open door suggested someone had come in later on.
Clara walked across the room so she could see behind the sofa. On the floor, tracking the path of the person who had opened the door, was a line of footprints. They appeared wet and muddy. They stopped in the middle of the room.
“He came in,” Richard said, his voice husky.
Clara glanced up at him and saw the shadow of fear in his eyes.
“He could still be in the house!” Richard added in a hiss.
Clara bent down and examined the footprints. They were very clear, as if they had been carefully arranged. Anyone who had walked into their house with muddy boots would know that prints were not normally left so even on the floor. Dirty shoes leave crude marks, the dirt quickly falling off. Prints are usually partial, whereas these were well defined. Clara had the impression these prints had been strategically placed, the shoes used to make them had been evenly coated in something dark and sticky to make sure the prints were easy to read. Whether that meant the person was still in the house or not was another matter.