Painting The Darkness - Retail

by Robert Goddard

  ‘My wife is returning this evening,’ I announced.

  ‘I’m glad,’ Miss Rossiter replied. ‘When will she be arriving?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Late, I imagine. I hope to be back in time.’

  ‘Back?’

  ‘Yes. I have to meet somebody this evening. A man named Thompson, who claims to know who Norton really is. I’m sorry to have to leave you, but …’ My words died as a stray thought intruded. Miss Rossiter had removed a forty-year-old newspaper cutting from Fiveash’s surgery referring to Harvey Thompson and his long-ago duel with Gervase Davenall. Why had I not remembered before? I could ask her now to explain why she had taken it.

  The question never reached my lips. Miss Rossiter was staring past me, her placid expression transformed by terror. With a quivering hand, she pointed towards the window behind me, still uncurtained against the onset of night. ‘Quinn!’ she cried. ‘He’s there!’

  For a second, I could not take my eyes from her fear-struck face. Then I whirled round, to find only the blank glass of the window-pane waiting to greet me.

  ‘He was there,’ Miss Rossiter said from behind me. ‘I saw him, his horrid awful face, looking in at us.’

  Reasoning that, if he had been there, he might still be in the garden, I raced into the hall and headed for the morning room, where the french windows offered the quickest route out. I fumbled for a moment with the bolts, then flung them open and rushed on to the veranda.

  There was nothing. Light from the drawing-room flooded on to the railings and the patch of lawn beyond them. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, all I could see through the fog was the garden I knew so well. The only sounds to reach my ears were my own panting breath and the derisive hoot of an early owl. I walked to the end of the veranda and waited again for signs of trespass to reach me. But there was none.

  Then I saw it. The side-gate was open, no more than a crack, but sufficient to admit a wedge of light from the porch lamp. Burrows always closed and bolted it before going home, but now it was open. I walked across, opened it wide and looked down the empty drive. If Quinn had used that route, he would be long gone by now. I closed the gate and bolted it. It was possible Burrows had forgotten to do so. I remembered him doing as much on a previous occasion, less than two months before, when Norton had first intruded on my world. Or it was possible that Miss Rossiter had truly seen her persecutor.

  I went back into the house and found her still sitting on the sofa, staring fixedly at the window. I drew the curtains, then sat down beside her and once more found my arms encircling her shoulders.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘If he was there, he’s gone now.’

  She had been crying. I could see the track of tears on her pale cheeks. She looked at me with undisguised anguish. ‘But how far has he gone? For how long? He may just be waiting – for you to leave me alone.’

  ‘Then, I won’t leave you alone.’ My appointment with Thompson seemed unimportant in that moment, What could I buy from him that compared with Melanie Rossiter’s gift of the truth?

  ‘You said—’ she began.

  ‘I won’t leave you,’ I said firmly. ‘Trust me.’

  ‘Thank you. You’re so kind. After all, I may have imagined it.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Either way, you won’t be alone.’

  III

  It was slow going in Fleet Street and the Strand that evening, with a clammy fog descending to add its impenetrable layers to the encroaching darkness, but Richard Davenall did not care. Unlike most of those aboard the swaying trams or hurrying past him on the crowded pavement, he had no certain destination, no object in mind, no purpose to his journey.

  Crossing Trafalgar Square, he found himself – if anything, against his inclinations – walking along the north side of Pall Mall, a route which he knew would take him past the club to which he had once belonged and to which Hugo still belonged. He had resolved to disregard the fact, but when he came abreast of it he could not resist glancing across the road at the familiar, mutely lit doorway. What he saw there stopped him in his tracks.

  The bay window to the left of the club entrance gave on to what had been known in his day as the Shelburne Bar. Being less private than the other bars, it had always attracted the younger, more ostentatious members. Sure enough, there they still were, lounging beneath the gleaming chandeliers, parading their accents and postures for the admiration of their fellows. Richard looked across at these specimens of the people whose legal affairs he had for so long handled and realized, not for the first time, that the work he had once enjoyed was now, in the truest sense, hateful to him.

  Then he looked closer. There, at the centre of the carousing ruck, was Hugo. He might have known. Sir Hugo Davenall, never one to believe that any celebration could be premature, was indulging to the full the victory he had sensed was his at Lincoln’s Inn. He would have bought everybody in the room a drink by now, would have crowed to them of his triumph and defied them not to share his pleasure. There was Freddy Cleveland, smiling alongside him, and that fellow Leighton, besides several others whom Richard dimly recognized. Hugo himself, hair awry, cigarette drooping from grinning mouth, champagne-glass in hand, was clearly already drunk, his troubles for the moment forgotten, the remote possibility of failure excluded from his mind.

  ‘Not a pretty sight, is it?’

  The voice had come as if from nowhere. When Richard whirled round, it was to find James Norton standing behind him in the mouth of a narrow alley, barely visible in the depth of the shadows.

  ‘Hello, Richard,’ he said. ‘What brings you here?’

  ‘I … I could ask you the same.’

  ‘Put it down to nostalgia. I wanted to take a look at the old place. What should I find but Hugo? Putting on a floor show.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Sorry. It must be an Americanism I picked up along the way. Cigarette?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Please yourself. I believe I will.’

  As Norton pulled his cigarette-case from an inside pocket of his overcoat, lamplight glistened on its silver surface. Richard caught his breath.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Is it this that caught your eye?’ He took out a cigarette, then snapped the case shut and tossed it into Richard’s awkward grasp. ‘Papa gave it me for my twenty-first birthday.’ Richard turned it over in his hands. The initials ‘J D’ were visible, elegantly inscribed at the centre of the design. ‘Remember it?’

  ‘I … I’m not sure.’

  ‘Even if you were, it wouldn’t make any difference. Would it?’ Norton lit a match and eyed Richard calmly, then touched it to the cigarette and blew it out. ‘Even if I could make you believe me, you wouldn’t act on it. Would you?’ He reached out and retrieved the case.

  ‘I can’t believe what isn’t true.’

  ‘You’ve known me since the day I came to your office. There’s no need to pretend now.’

  ‘I’m not pretending.’

  ‘Why do you think I refused to answer Giffard’s question?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Yes you do. It’s because I love her, Richard. If I didn’t, I’d have dragged her into that courtroom and had Russell force her to acknowledge me. But she deserves better of me than that. Which is more than I can say for my family.’

  ‘You’ve no right—’

  ‘I’ve every right!’ His voice was suddenly bitter. ‘Why do you think I lied about how I contracted syphilis? What good did it do me?’

  ‘Perhaps you thought it would win the court’s sympathy.’

  ‘That’s nonsense, and you know it. I’m trying to save the family’s good name, if that means anything to you. I’m giving all of you every chance I can to see reason. But what have you offered me in return?’

  ‘Mr Norton—’

  ‘The name is Davenall! You know that.’

  ‘I know no such thing. Now, if you’ll excuse me,
I really think—’

  ‘Wait!’ Norton’s hand touched his shoulder in a placatory gesture. ‘Don’t turn your back on me, Richard. I may lose tomorrow, for our family’s sake.’

  Richard paused, a moment longer than he knew he should. The gentle pressure of that hand on his shoulder moved him now he had looked away. More than any words, it begged him for once in his life, to trust the promptings of his soul.

  ‘Look at Hugo,’ Norton murmured. In the brightly lit, bay-windowed bar, Sir Hugo Davenall was laughing to drunken excess at his own or another’s joke. Freddy Cleveland was slapping him on the back. All his friends were about him, gathering him in the lap of a camaraderie that counted for nothing.

  ‘I don’t blame you, Richard. You least of all. I would blame no man – for standing by his son.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Papa knew all along that Hugo was your child. He told me so himself. Don’t worry. He told nobody else. The only person he felt he needed to tell was his only son.’

  IV

  As the evening stretched towards night, we grew nervous, Miss Rossiter and I. There was nothing more to be done until Constance arrived; and that, I suppose, is what pressed hardest on our minds. All was done now, all was prepared. We had only to wait.

  After a dinner of sorts, Miss Rossiter asked if she might go up to her room to rest: she felt drained by the anxieties of the day. I was left alone then, alone to re-read her statement, to swallow a few pegs of whisky and savour the prospect of the victory I felt sure lay within my grasp. I grew easier in my mind, more confident that I could carry off the prize.

  When the drawing-room clock struck eight, it roused me from a light doze. I was instantly alert, surprised, almost betrayed, by my own drowsiness. An irrational fear seized me, but was swiftly quelled: there was the statement, where I had left it in the bureau. Nevertheless, the experience worried me. It might be several hours yet before Constance was with us. I folded the statement, slipped it into an envelope, sealed it, then took it up to my study and locked it in the escritoire.

  Once it was done, with the key to the lock nestling in my waistcoat pocket, my anxiety faded. I crossed to the window, pushed back the curtains and looked out down the drive into Avenue Road. It was a still, black, fog-wrapped night. I studied the shapes of the trees carefully, comparing each with my memory of what was normal until I was as certain as I could be that nobody, Quinn or anyone else, was lurking near the house.

  I drank another Scotch and imagined my reunion to come with Constance: how I would break the news to her, how I would be both more merciful and more masterful than I had ever been. It would not be long now, not long before she saw me in my true light.

  Feeling a return of the earlier drowsiness, I stepped out on to the landing and looked down the passage towards the guest room. The door was ajar, but the only light from within was the flickering glow of the fire. I moved towards it, telling myself that a concern for Miss Rossiter’s comfort was my only motive.

  She was asleep on the bed. I had only to push the door open an inch or so to see her head on the pillows. She had loosened the high collar of her dress and let down her hair from the bun in which it had been tied. Its rich tresses, intensely black against the white counterpane, reached almost to her waist.

  I stepped into the doorway and looked at her, at the imperious eyes, closed now but still seeming to command me behind their pale lids, at the full-lipped half-smiling mouth, the faintly jutting chin, the pulse of an artery in her exposed neck, the rise and fall of her bosom beneath the dress, the barely perceptible movement of the petals of her corsage, minutely stirred by the rhythm of her breathing. In that moment, forgetful that I would soon no longer be alone with her, I felt the first rush of a terrible longing. To run my fingers through her hair, to kiss her soft lips, to touch …

  I was in the passage again, the door of the guest room closed behind me. I was panting, sweating, grappling to comprehend what I had so nearly done. The monstrous folly even to have thought of it stood compounded by the ease with which I might have succumbed. Within hours, I was to be reunited with my wife. What was I dreaming of? Miss Rossiter had come to me for help, and this is how I had rewarded her.

  I stumbled back to the study, poured myself another Scotch and swallowed it in two gulps. Calm seemed instantly restored. With Miss Rossiter out of sight, I could dismiss what I had felt as a momentary aberration. I went to the window and looked out once more. All was quiet. I checked the escritoire. It was securely locked.

  As I turned back towards the centre of the room, my head swam. I had drunk too much, I was over-tired. Whatever the cause, I felt overwhelmingly heavy of limb and thought. I pulled out my watch. It was nearly nine o’clock, the time when Thompson would be waiting for me at the Lamb and Flag. Or was it so late? The hands and the figures of the watch-face were so blurred when I looked at them that I could be sure of nothing, save that Thompson would wait in vain.

  I moved unsteadily to the chaise-longue and flung myself down on it. A little rest, I told myself, was all I needed. I would be awake and refreshed long before Constance arrived. But I cannot pretend that my last waking thought was of my wife. It was, in truth, of Melanie Rossiter. It seemed, for an instant, that her face was before me, as it had been when I had watched her sleeping in the guest room. Yet now she was no longer asleep, for her eyes were suddenly open, wide and dark and fathomless, and looking straight at me.

  V

  Emily Sumner had lodged for the night in a temperance hotel near Charing Cross regularly patronized by the Dean’s wife when attending committee meetings of her charity for fallen women of the East End. Whether the Dean’s wife would have approved of Emily’s mission to the capital is doubtful, but it would certainly not have escaped her attention that Emily had returned to the hotel that evening in a state of unladylike agitation, nor that she had been heard talking to herself in the residents’ lounge before retiring to her room with a quite unreasonable request that dinner be served to her there, rather than in the dining-room. In the circumstances, it was as well for Emily’s reputation that the Dean’s wife was ensconced at the Deanery in Salisbury, blissfully unaware that not one but both of the Sumner sisters had deserted the close.

  When there came a knock at the door shortly after nine o’clock that evening, Emily assumed it was the maid, come to collect the dinner-tray. But when she opened the door, tray held ready in her arms, it was to find her sister Constance standing breathless on the threshold.

  ‘Constance!’ she exclaimed. ‘I never thought—’

  ‘Neither did I. May I come in?’

  ‘Of course, of course.’ She set down the tray and ushered her sister in. ‘Close the door. Virtually every resident seems to be a friend of the Dean’s wife, or at any rate her informant.’

  Normally, such a remark would have raised a smile between them, but it was neither said nor greeted humorously.

  ‘I received this telegram from William,’ said Constance gravely, handing Emily the crumpled message. ‘It left me no choice but to come at once.’

  ‘So I see. But this … It makes no …’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘William interrupted James’s testimony in court today. He accused him of lying. In the end, the judge had to have him removed.’

  Constance looked away. ‘As I feared. They are at each other’s throat.’

  ‘No!’ Emily touched her sister’s shoulder. ‘James did not react at all. He behaved impeccably throughout.’

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ Constance replied, facing her once more. ‘I must know everything.’

  Emily was moved to tears before she had completed her account of the day’s proceedings. For her and her sister, Norton’s refusal to speak ill of his dead father was obvious evidence that he was indeed the stubbornly loyal son he claimed to be. For them, his refusal to answer Giffard’s crucial question was proof they scarcely needed of his nobility and sincerity – above all, of his enduring love for C
onstance. Without knowing it, he had chosen the one route by which he might still win her, the one route which also ensured the forfeit of his claim.

  When Emily had finished, and was drying the last of her tears, Constance, who had remained silent and expressionless throughout, put her hand to the coffee-pot on the dinner-tray and, finding it still warm, poured some for both of them. Only when they had drained the shared cup of black reviving liquid did she speak.

  ‘Do you know what I most loved in James? Do you know what it is that I still love in him?’

  ‘He is a dear good man, Constance.’

  ‘Yes. And so, by his lights, is William. But James, you see, has an inner strength that sets him apart. When he first told me that he was leaving and that our wedding could not take place, I tried every way I could imagine to dissuade him, even … Well, no doubt you can guess the extremity I was driven to. But he was not to be swayed. He could not be tempted. I know now why he felt he had to leave, why he could not, for any sake, marry me: but to have carried through his purpose, to have resisted the need he must have felt to confide in somebody, to have turned his back on the world he knew, to have exiled himself so that his father’s shame might remain hidden: that is true courage, that is true goodness.’

  ‘He is still … hiding his father’s shame.’

  ‘And is prepared to lose this case for the sake of it. I cannot understand what his family are thinking of.’

  ‘Themselves,’ said Emily bitterly.

  ‘Yes. I fear it is so.’

  ‘What are we to do, then?’

  Constance rose, as if the decision had already been made. ‘William would not have made that exhibition of himself in court if he’d had the proof he spoke of in the telegram. It was dispatched at two o’clock this afternoon. When did you say he was removed from Lincoln’s Inn?’

  ‘It must have been shortly after noon.’

  ‘So either he came upon the proof in the space of two short hours or …’

  ‘Or what?’ Emily could tell by the determined line of her sister’s mouth that she favoured the alternative.