I was piecing together the remaining fragments of information in my mind. “Ned must have come into the hall from the stables soon after that,” I reflected. “He told me he knocked on the library door and received no reply. By that time Mary would already have returned to the drawing room after running after Rodric to the stables ... Esther was upstairs in her apartments, and—” I stopped, blushed, looked away.
“—and my father found me with her when he stormed upstairs to see her after his quarrel with Rodric.” I sensed he too was looking away. He was standing very still, as if absorbed with the pain of memory. “I’ve never felt so ashamed in all my life,” he said after a pause. “It certainly served to bring me to my senses with a jolt, but then even before I could begin to apologize to my father and beg his forgiveness he was murdered.”
The bitterness and regret in his voice was unmistakable. In an effort to turn to some other aspect of the situation I said in a rush: “Axel, what did happen to Rodric? I suppose Alice really must have killed him?”
“Yes, of course she did. I would assume he returned to the house—strictly against my advice, of course, but then he always was reckless—to confront Vere, whom he suspected, and try to force the truth out of him. He probably went to Vere’s apartments but found not Vere, as he had hoped, but Alice, who was unable to resist the temptation to kill him to preserve the fiction that Rodric was a murderer who had met his just end in the Marsh. After all, how much more convenient to have a corpse for a scapegoat than a live protesting innocent man! I presume she caught him unawares and stunned him; he did not suspect her, remember, and so wouldn’t have been anticipating such a thing.”
“But what did she do with his body?”
“I wondered about that for a long time. In the end I made a thorough search of the attics and found a leather bag which I had often seen Alice use to take presents from Haraldsford to her mother. I wondered why Alice no longer used it, and then on examining it I saw that the interior was bloodstained. After searching the attic further I found an old meat cleaver from the kitchens under a loose board in the floor and I began to grasp what had happened. Even then I still didn’t think that Alice had dismembered the body and taken it piece by piece to be buried in her mother’s patch of land at Haraldsford; I suppose I didn’t think a woman could be capable of such a gruesome task. I merely thought Vere had found the discarded bag in the attic and used it to convey the dismembered body to some remote section of the Marsh. When I showed the cleaver and bag to Charles Sherman yesterday it didn’t occur to him either that anyone but Vere could have been responsible. But we underestimated Alice.”
“So Rodric’s body...” I recoiled from the idea.
“It may not be buried in Dame Joan’s herb patch, but I shall most certainly suggest to the authorities that they look there before assuming the body to be buried in the Marsh. No matter how many journeys Alice made to her mother’s cottage, her visits would never have given rise to suspicion. What more natural than that she should call on her mother? It would have been the easiest way for her.”
I shuddered.
“Of course Alice was also responsible for Mary’s death, I think there can be no doubt of that. It seems reasonable to assume that she obtained a phial of poison from her mother whom she visited with the child after church that morning, and then later put the contents of the phial in Mary’s cup of tea. I should have remembered that it was Alice who suggested having tea after dinner, and it was Alice who left the room in person to order the tea, ostensibly to spare the servants on a Sunday but in reality no doubt to get the phial from her room. And I should have remembered too that it was Alice who poured out the tea when it arrived. But I didn’t remember. I was too busy suspecting Vere.”
“I wonder if Vere read my letter which you left in the library to trap him,” I said. “I suppose he did read it and then went straight to tell Alice and to ask what he should do.”
“He must have done,” Axel agreed, “for Alice was a country girl—she could barely read and could only write the most elementary words which she needed in maintaining the household accounts.”
“Then perhaps Vere did realize that she was guilty—perhaps they agreed together that I should be killed.”
“No, I’m certain Vere wasn’t involved to that extent. I’ve talked to him, and I’m convinced of his innocence. Alice never made him an accomplice because she was too busy trying to protect him: from my father, from Rodric, from Mary, and finally from you.” He stood up and moved over to the window to stare out over the Marsh before adding abruptly: “I didn’t think you’d be in any danger at all when I brought you to Haraldsdyke.” He was facing me again, moving back towards me. “I still think you wouldn’t have been in any danger if you had been accustomed to behaving as a conventional young girl might be expected to behave, but since you have this remarkable talent for seeking all possible danger and running headlong towards it—”
I laughed at this. “No, Axel, that’s not fair! I was only puzzled and curious.”
“You were also a constant source of anxiety to me, my dear,” he retorted. “However, be that as it may ... by the way, how exactly did you manage to escape from that locked room? When I found you in the attic with Charles Sherman, I very nearly killed you myself out of sheer exasperation!”
I described my escape meekly.
“You amaze me,” he said, and he was not angry any more, I noticed to my relief, only amused. “I can see I shall never be able to place you safely under lock and key again.”
“I hope,” I said, “that the need to do so will never arise.”
He laughed, caressed my cheek with his finger and leaned forward to brush my lips with his own.
“Am I forgiven for my multitude of deceptions and evasions and, I very much fear, for frightening you on more than one occasion?”
“You leave me no alternative,” I said demurely, determined to make him endure the pangs of conscience for as long as possible. “Besides, why didn’t you trust me?”
“Did you trust me?” he said, and he was serious now, the amusement gone. “Wasn’t I merely a stranger to you? Didn’t you consider yourself merely bound to me by ties born of convenience? Can you honestly tell me you loved me enough to merit a confidence of such magnitude?”
I could not look at him. I fingered his hand which rested on mine and stared down at the carpet. “Did you expect me to love you straight away?” I said painfully. “You didn’t love me. I was a mere child to you. And still seem so, no doubt.”
His hand covered mine now and closed upon it. “Your only childishness lies in your lack of perception,” he said. “If you were older you would have perceived all too clearly that from the beginning I found you exceedingly attractive. However, I tried to hold myself apart from you as often as possible because I sensed from your questions before our marriage that you disliked the idea of extreme intimacy. It was, after all, a marriage of convenience, and although you were benefiting to a certain extent by consenting to it, I was certainly benefiting just as much from your consent and I wanted to make things as pleasant for you as possible, at least for a time.”
I remembered my tears at Claybury Park, my loneliness and distress.
“I merely thought you didn’t care.”
“I cared more than I would ever have dreamed possible,” he said, “and soon came to care even more than that. When I found you with Ned at Rye, I knew I cared more than I had ever cared for anyone in my life before. The bitter part—the ironic part—was that having for the first time in my life experienced this depth of emotion, I found it increasingly evident that you were not attracted to me. I seemed to fancy you looked too long and often at Ned, and then there was that business of the potion—”
I was consumed with shame. My cheeks seemed to be afire. “Did you see me leave Dame Joan’s cottage?”
“Yes, and knew at once why you had gone there.”
I stared miserably down at his hand clasped tightly in mine.
“I feel nothing,” I said rapidly, wanting only to repair the harm I had done. “It’s all past now—I never want to see another potion again.”
He was silent, wondering, I suppose, if this meant that I cared a little or was merely recoiling from the sordidness of the incident and my narrow escape from death by poisoning.
“It was only because I was frightened,” I said. “Frightened of you, frightened of the unknown, frightened of the world. But that’s all gone now. I’m not frightened any more.”
He was silent still, but his hand relaxed a little. I looked up and saw his withdrawn expression and longed to smooth it from his eyes.
“I wish we could go away,” I said impulsively. “I wish we didn’t have to stay here. I’m sure I shall never sleep soundly in our bedroom again for fear of seeing Alice’s ghost. And the house is so gloomy and oppressive when winter closes in and the mist thickens over the Marsh. I hate it.”
“I hate it too,” he said frankly to my astonishment. “I always did. I never intended to stay here long—the only reason for my return was to clear Rodric’s name and bring my father’s murderer to justice. After that I intended to give up the estate by deed of gift to Vere’s son Stephen and appoint Vere and the Sherman brothers trustees until the boy comes of age. That will mean Vere can live and work on the estate he loves while the Shermans can curb his more extravagant tendencies. And Vere will be happy in the knowledge that the estate will belong to his son and heir outright. I thought that was the best solution.”
“Oh yes indeed!” I tried not to sound too pleased. Stifling my immense relief at the prospect of escape from Haraldsdyke and life in the country I added hesitantly: “But where will we ourselves go? What is to happen to us?”
He smiled at me and I saw he knew what I was thinking. “I’ve come to the conclusion,” he said softly, “that you’re much too beautiful to be incarcerated in the depths of the country where no one can see you. I think I’ll take you to my town house in Vienna, my dear, to the city I love best in all the world, and you shall make a sparkling, glittering entrance into Viennese grand society.”
“Well, that’s all very well,” said Alexander plaintively when I told him the news later, “but what about me? I shan’t be able to come and visit you in the holidays.”
“You’ll only be at school for a little longer,” I pointed out, “and after that you shall come and visit us in Vienna.”
“But Vienna ... well, I mean, it’s rather foreign territory, isn’t it? Are you sure you’ll be all right?”
“But we’re as foreign as Axel!” I reminded him crossly. “You always forget that half our inheritance comes from across the Channel. Besides, if Axel wanted to go to America, I would go with him. I would travel around the world with him, if he decided to go.”
Alexander looked at me wonderingly. “You’re so strange,” he said with a sigh. “I shall never be able to keep up with you. You’ll be telling me next that you’re in love with him...”
Vere was grateful to Axel for granting Haraldsdyke to Stephen, but he remained numbed by his loss for a long time, and for at least ten years after Alice’s death our rare visits to Haraldsdyke were gloomy, depressing occasions indeed. However, he did eventually remarry when he was about thirty-five years old, and after that the atmosphere at Haraldsdyke became more normal and welcoming to the casual visitor. His second wife was a nice woman, a widow a few years his senior whose first husband had been a clerk in some legal firm in Winchelsea; Vere evidently preferred women of an inferior rank to himself, although his second wife was socially far superior to Alice. Of Vere’s three children, Stephen lived to marry and perpetuate the family name, but his younger brother died of diphtheria in childhood, and his sister, although living long enough to marry, died in childbirth a year after her wedding. On the whole I thought that branch of the family more inclined to misfortune than any of the others.
As for Ned, he went to America, became immensely rich, but never married. We heard news of him from Vere to whom he wrote regularly, and twice he came back to England for a visit, but of course we were in Vienna and never saw him.
Esther married that most eligible bachelor Charles Sherman and thereafter lived at Rye, which presumably suited her better than her life as Robert Brandson’s estranged wife at Haraldsdyke. But I suspect not much better. Esther was not the kind of woman born to be contented.
Rodric’s bones were exhumed from Dame Joan’s herb patch and given a proper Christian burial at Haraldsford church. Dame Joan herself denied all knowledge of Rodric’s death, but naturally no one believed her. I suppose it might have been possible to charge her with being an accessory after the fact of murder, but I was superstitiously reluctant to meddle with her and so, I discovered, was everyone else. The villagers of Haraldsford summoned the courage to mass before her door and threaten to burn down her cottage, but she dispersed them with a wave of her broomstick; they all turned tail and fled for fear of being cursed and irrevocably doomed. Shortly after that incident Vere sent but a warning that anyone who did not leave her well alone would have to answer to the justices of the peace for his conduct, and Dame Joan was abandoned with much relief to her customary solitude.
My one sorrow during the years that followed my arrival in Vienna was that although he wrote often enough Alexander never visited us; he had decided to pursue a political career, and as it did not pay in the English political arena to have foreign connections, my brother spent much time concealing his French blood and Austrian relatives. However, in the end this availed him little, for the English have no more love for bastards without respectable pedigrees than they have for foreigners, and Alexander’s background ultimately told against him. After that, much disillusioned, he went out to the colonies and settled in Jamaica where he managed to involve himself profitably in the spice trade. I thought of him sometimes, far away in a home I had never seen, but on the whole as the years passed I did not think of him too often. I was too absorbed in my own family, my own life.
After we had been in Vienna several years, Axel inherited both a title and more property there from a distant cousin, and the acquisition of the title opened for us all the doors into every section of Austrian society, even those saloons which had previously been beyond our reach. Vienna was ours; and what now can be written about the Vienna of today, the most glittering city in all Europe, which has not already been written? Vienna spiraled to a brilliant zenith of romantic grandeur, and I was there when those sweeping beautiful tunes with their hidden sadness and sensuous nostalgia first enchanted the world. For the waltzes more than anything else seemed to symbolize the new era unfolding in that ancient unique city, and the new era was my era and I was there when it began.
But still sometimes when I sleep I dream not of the brilliant ballrooms of Vienna but of another land of long ago, the land of the green Marsh and of the cobbled alleys of Rye, and suddenly I am on the road to Haraldsdyke again and dreading the moment when I must set foot once more within those oppressive walls. But even as I finally catch a glimpse of the house in my dreams, the mist creeps in across the Marsh with its long white fingers, and I know then that I shall never again reach the Haraldsdyke of my memories, and that it has disappeared forever behind the shrouded walls of time.
The Shrouded Walls Page 19