by Caro Peacock
‘You must have been furious when he arrived with that note from your husband saying he must be employed here,’ I said.
‘I believe it was Cornelius’s final piece of malice against me. His mind was going, but he used this last spark of rationality to humiliate me after his death. Whiteley was trembling when he told me about it. I said he must send Handy away, pay him off, do anything. But Whiteley’s a fool in some ways. His master’s orders must be obeyed, even if the master’s malicious and mad.’
‘So you were relieved when you knew Handy was dead?’ I said.
Her eyes stayed closed.
‘I thanked God for it, and I bless the hand of whoever killed him.’
‘Do you know who killed him?’
‘I don’t, but if I did, no power on earth could make me tell anybody. It was an act of justice. It took more than twenty years, but it came in the end. I’m glad I lived to see it.’
‘Justice for what?’
‘For something he and Cornelius did.’
‘What?’
‘I’m not going to talk about it. There’s no need now. The devil has driven Cornelius off where he belongs, with Handy clinging to the back of the coach as he used to do.’
The curtains billowed again in an isolated gust of breeze, like a breath from some sleeping monster. The heavy feathers of ash shifted on the tablecloth.
‘There’ll be a thunderstorm tonight,’ she said. ‘I used to love thunderstorms when I was a girl.’
Until one particular thunderstorm by the shore of Lake Como. I waited, but she said nothing. I thought she’d fallen asleep and was about to get up and go, alerting Betty on the way out, when she spoke again.
‘I haven’t told you why I wanted to see you, have I? I want you to do me a favour.’
‘If I can, yes.’
‘Will you come and stay with me, here at the house?’
Her eyes were open now. She swung her bare feet to the floor and made an effort to go into hostess mode.
‘Just for a day or two. It would be so much more comfortable for you than the cottage and we could talk about pictures and flowers and so forth.’ She stretched out a hand to me. It was trembling just perceptibly, betraying her attempt to speak lightly. ‘Please, do say you will.’
‘What are you scared of?’ I said.
Tears came into her eyes. She looked away.
‘Somebody came into my bedroom the night before last.’
I stared at her, puzzled.
‘Betty, perhaps?’
‘No. I asked her this morning. But I knew it wasn’t her. It would have felt different.’
‘Felt? Did whoever it was touch you?’
‘No. A feeling in the air, I mean. I woke up suddenly. It was dark, but I knew at once there was somebody in the room with me. I said, “Who’s there?” It didn’t answer, just went out of the room quite quietly.’
‘Didn’t you see it go?’
‘No. I’d drawn the curtains most of the way round the bed.’
‘A man’s footsteps or a woman’s?’
‘A man’s.’
‘Could it have been Mr Carmichael, looking in to see if you were all right?’
I was trespassing there. It would have been very peculiar behaviour in a librarian, but she’d as good as admitted he was more than that.
‘No. I had the strongest feeling that…’ she hesitated, ‘…that whoever it was didn’t wish me well. And then the message came from London that Cornelius was dead.’
After the hesitation, the last words came out in a rush.
‘You thought there was some connection?’ I said.
‘I think it was Cornelius’s spirit, making a last check on his property on his way to hell.’
Anger and misery came together in her voice.
‘Have you said anything about this to anybody else?’
‘I told Robert. I’m not sure he believes me. He’s been telling me I’m taking too strong a sleeping draught, you see. But even with the sleeping draught, I still wasn’t sleeping. I’ll go mad if I can’t sleep.’
I thought of the bottle and medicine glass beside her bed. Laudanum, for a certainty. Liquid opium. Plenty of people took it to help them sleep or to calm the pain of toothache or indigestion. But taken habitually and in large quantities, it brought strange dreams. I remembered one man had been haunted by visions of monstrous crocodiles. It might explain both Sophia’s nervous state today and the visitor of the night before. I wondered if she’d taken laudanum that night by Lake Como.
‘If you really want me to stay with you, I will,’ I said.
I was certain that there’d been no intruder, but my agreement didn’t stem entirely from kindness. I was sorry for her, but I sensed that she still hadn’t told me the entire truth. She was on the edge of confiding something, but still couldn’t bring herself to take the risk.
‘Thank you. Thank you so very much.’
‘But I’ll have to bring my maid. I can’t leave her in the cottage on her own.’
‘Of course. There’s a spare bed in the maids’ room. I’ll have the gig sent round at once. You can go and fetch her and your luggage.’
She jumped up and ran to the bell-pull by the fireplace, decisive again now she’d got what she wanted. When Betty appeared she gave clear orders for bringing the gig to the front door and having a bed made up in the room where we were sitting. If the maid was surprised at this arrangement when there must surely be a spare bedroom in the house, she gave no sign of it.
Within ten minutes I was bowling up the drive and an hour later coming back down it, with Tabby by my side and my hastily packed trunk on the back. Tabby had been unimpressed by our entry into society.
‘We’d just got comfortable here.’
‘You’ll be comfortable at the hall as well. Just watch what the other maids do, don’t talk too much, and don’t ask questions.’
I couldn’t keep her with me all the time, so would have to trust her to the mercies of the servants’ hall. The look she gave me when we parted in the hall and she was led away by Betty was as resentful as an abandoned terrier’s. Lady Brinkburn came to meet me and take me upstairs. A bed was already made up for me in the corner of the sitting room and a table for two set up by the window, laid with a damask cloth, silver and glassware. I imagined the concealed resentment of the servants at having to take such extra trouble.
‘I’ve ordered supper to be sent up here,’ she said. ‘It’s cooler than downstairs.’
I doubted that, but was relieved at not having to meet Robert Carmichael again that day. Now that Lady Brinkburn herself had confirmed the story about him and her husband, I’d have some trouble looking him in the eye.
‘I’ve told Robert you’re staying with me,’ she said, as if guessing my thoughts. ‘He’s very grateful to you.’
‘He has no need.’
A man brought up my small trunk and, on Lady Brinkburn’s orders, deposited it in her bedroom. She asked if I’d like my maid called to help me unpack. When I said I’d manage by myself, thank you, she seemed relieved.
‘So pleasant, just the two of us.’
From her voice, we might have been two schoolgirls on an escapade, but the strained look was on her face all the time. I asked if her head was still aching.
‘Yes. It won’t be better until the storm’s broken. It’s building up, look.’
I followed her to the open window. A cloud bank the colour and shape of a bunch of black grapes had appeared in the west, its edges outlined in gold by the horizontal sun. Thunder sounded, so far in the distance that it was felt as a vibration in the body rather than heard. She shivered.
‘Once it gets in the river valley it rolls on and on for hours.’
Like a storm in the mountains. I guessed she was thinking about a late summer night by Lake Como. We stayed silently by the window until there was a knock on the door and Betty wheeled in the supper trolley and laid out dishes and a wine cooler on the table.
‘
That will be all, thank you,’ Lady Brinkburn said. ‘Leave the trolley. You can clear away in the morning.’
I caught a surprised, even concerned, look from Betty. More disruption to the routine. We sat at the table and Lady Brinkburn helped me to trout in aspic with cucumber, asparagus, chilled Muscadet. I was hungry and ate with a good appetite, but she only picked at her food. Her spaniel, Lovelace, sat under the table with imploring eyes and got more of the trout than she did. The storm was coming closer, the rumbles of thunder louder and more frequent. She winced at every one of them but kept up a determined and entirely conventional conversation, mostly about travel, encouraging me to talk about the places I’d visited.
‘Oh, you are so fortunate to have seen the Bay of Naples,’ she said. ‘I should have loved to visit the south.’
She put it in the past tense, as if she were an old woman already.
‘There’s time, isn’t there? You could travel where you liked.’
She would presumably have some allowance from the estate and could, if she wished, marry her young librarian and fly south with him as freely as a swallow. The tutting of English society would mean nothing to them in Naples or Athens. But her husband’s death, which should give her a widow’s freedom, had brought the question of succession to a head. It could tie her down with legal proceedings for years and put her name in the mouths of gossips round every tea table and parish pump in England. She’d dug a deep ditch between herself and any chance of happiness. Perhaps I could help her step across it.
‘It must have occurred to you to leave things as they are,’ I said.
She frowned, as if she didn’t understand. I pressed on.
‘Surely Miles is well enough provided for, and he’s a young man who will make his own way in the world. Is it so important to you that he should have the title?’
‘It’s not a question of what’s important for me. It’s a matter of justice and honour.’
‘Your own honour or the world’s idea of honour?’
‘You’re clever, aren’t you?’ she said, and it didn’t sound much like a compliment. ‘I suppose you’ve been talking to Robert.’
I was about to deny it, until I remembered that I had talked to him about her, or rather he’d talked to me. I could hardly tell her that he’d appealed to me to make the world believe she was mad, for her own protection.
‘I’m not speaking for him, I’m speaking for myself,’ I said.
‘But you have talked about me, haven’t you? What did he tell you?’
‘Very little, except he was concerned for you.’
The hostility that had flared up in her seemed to be draining away. She looked relieved.
‘He worries about me too much.’
We finished the bottle of Muscadet. Although she’d barely eaten, she’d matched me glass for glass. She stood up, gathered our used plates and glasses, and stacked them on the trolley. I helped her push it out to the landing. The room was quite dark by now because of the clouds blotting out the evening sun, but she made no move to light lamps or candles. After a while she went through to her bedroom and came back with a dark green bottle and a small glass.
‘I shan’t sleep without it.’
She poured carefully until the glass was half full, squinted at it, then poured again until it was three-quarters full and tossed it back defiantly. She put glass and bottle on a table then lay back on the chaise longue. Her eyes closed, but her body still quivered at every rumble of thunder and when the first lightning forked across the sky her eyes jerked open with a scared and lost look, as if she didn’t know where she was. She made a small sound, like a newborn puppy. I went over to her.
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘You should be in bed.’
I got her to stand up and walked her through to the bedroom. Her nightdress was laid out ready on the white coverlet.
‘Don’t leave me.’
So I stood looking out of her window while she got ready for bed. As I was standing there, another flash of lightning seemed to rip the clouds apart and the rain started with the suddenness of slops being flung out of a bucket. It settled to a downpour, hissing down on the lawn and the gravel drive, and the smell of damp warm grass filled the room. The sash window had been open top and bottom and the rain was coming in. I pulled it down so that only a foot or so at the top was open and started drawing the curtains.
‘No, leave them open.’
She was in her nightdress with her hair down, her voice slurred.
‘But the lightning…’ I said.
‘Things can come in behind the curtains.’
The laudanum was obviously taking effect, but there was no arguing with her. I left the curtains as they were, held back the coverlet while she got into bed and smoothed it round her. Lovelace curled up at the foot of the bed. Her hand came out from under the covers and took tight hold of mine. I kneeled on the rug beside her and stayed until her breathing became slow and regular and the grip on my hand slackened, then carefully drew it away. I stood up and tiptoed out, leaving the door half open so that I’d hear if she called out.
Although dark, it still wasn’t late. I could hear life going on in the rest of the house, footsteps and muffled voices. The footsteps sounded louder when somebody came into the library downstairs. Robert Carmichael, probably wondering what was going on above his head. I didn’t blame him for anything, or not really. Certainly I didn’t blame her. She’d been horribly badly treated by her husband and had a right to take her happiness where she could. As for him–perhaps he really did love her. A man might love a woman fifteen or so years older than he was. He’d defended her and was concerned about her. So, the nagging disappointment in my mind was unfair to him and quite unreasonable.
I stood at the window and concentrated on the storm. Six seconds between the lightning and the thunder, so the heart of it was six miles away. Five seconds, coming closer. I liked storms. She’d liked storms too, until a certain night in her Italian tower. I thought of the journal. Now and then, distant lightning illuminates the under-sides of the clouds on the far side of the lake with a sullen kind of glow. Then, in the morning, Lord Brinkburn has told me something terrible, terrible. A sudden use of her husband’s formal title. All I knew now to add to that was that somehow the boy Handy had been involved. Also, his master’s opinion of him: That boy was born corrupt, that’s why I like him. Between one flash of lightning and the next, an idea came into my mind. If I could have woken her up then and asked her, I’d have done it, but I couldn’t expect sense from her laudanum-numbed brain.
The storm came to its climax with a burst of thunder that seemed to rock the chimney pots. I was sure it would wake Sophia, but in the quiet that followed it there was no sound from next door. The lightning was no more than an occasional throb on the horizon, the thunder a low rumble. I changed into my nightdress and climbed into bed. The scent and coolness of starched linen sheets were so soothing that my mind stopped racing and I let myself drift into a half sleep, gentle as the rocking of a boat on the water. The image of Robert Carmichael’s extended arms and bent neck tried to intrude into my boat, but I blocked it out. The half sleep became a full sleep, until it was shattered by a scream from the next room.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I jumped up and ran through to the bedroom. Sophia was standing at the window in her nightdress. The flat light between darkness and day and the rigidity of her body made her look like a stiff, archaic statue. There’d been only that one scream. Now she was staring silently at the lawn between the house and the river. I stood beside her, following the direction of her eyes. There was nothing there, not so much as a rabbit.
‘He’s gone,’ she said. ‘He disappeared into the bushes when he knew I’d seen him. I think he’s been there, watching my window, all the time I was asleep.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I could feel it. I had a dream of things crawling over my skin. I was so scared in my dream that I made myself wake up, and I looked out and
there he was, standing on the lawn.’
Laudanum talking, beyond a doubt. I thought it best to try and calm her.
‘The light’s odd at this time of the morning.’
‘I’m not seeing things. He was there.’
‘Then it might have been anybody–a gardener, up early,’ I said.
I glanced at the gilt travelling clock beside her bed. Twenty past four; too early even for the most conscientious gardener. ‘Or a poacher, perhaps.’
But would any poacher have crossed the lawn so openly?
‘It wasn’t either of those. He was wearing a long black coat and a low-crowned hat.’
‘Did you see his face?’
‘It was too far away, and I didn’t want to see his face.’
She shivered. I put a hand on her shoulder.
‘Go back to bed.’
I decided not to mention Robert Carmichael. If there really had been a person there, wasn’t he the most likely one, keeping watch on her window from a distance? But then, wouldn’t a woman have recognised the man she loved, even at a distance in dim light?
She stood for a while as if she hadn’t heard me, then sighed, walked across the room and sat on the edge of her bed. The sheets and coverlet were twisted like washing from a mangle. I settled on the bedside rug, looking up at her.
‘At least the storm’s gone away.’ I said.
‘It’s worse when the storm’s gone.’
Her voice was remote, as if coming from the back of a cave. I guessed she was remembering that other morning after a storm, more than twenty years before, and sensed that she wanted to tell me, or at least was near the brink of a decision.
‘What happened, that night by Lake Como?’ I said.
‘I slept,’ she said, still sounding surprised about it after all this time. ‘I didn’t expect to, with the headache and the storm, but I slept.’
‘In your tower by the lake?’
‘Yes, in my tower.’