by Dean, Anna
She stopped abruptly and studied the dust upon the floor, making out the vague shape of footprints. Someone had walked here recently. Whoever it was had walked rather lightly and it was not possible to see the prints clearly; but they might be the prints of Mr Lancelot’s dancing shoes …
Except that those dancing shoes had been perfectly clean when he returned to the hall! She remembered searching them for evidence of the stables.
She looked down at her own feet in the block of light falling through one of the doors. There was already a layer of plaster dust covering the toes, turning the dark, serviceable leather grey. There had certainly been no such dust on the feet of her dancing partner.
Frowning thoughtfully, she looked into the first room of the wing. It was a dismal sight: a bedchamber stripped of its smaller furnishings, leaving only a mouldering bed and an oak linen press – items too large to be easily moved.
And it was the same in every room. In the next room a bird had fallen down the chimney at some time, soiling the bed hangings and covering the floor with feathers in its frantic efforts at escape. But the third, and last, room was the most desolate of all. Here so much plaster had fallen from the ceiling that the canopy of the bed had collapsed beneath its weight, skewing the curtains and spilling a great heap of rubble and white dust onto the fine yellow silk of the coverlet.
Dido stood in the doorway, quite at a loss to understand why anyone should come here by candlelight. There was nothing in this room that could be of use, or interest, to anyone. And yet she was sure that it was here, to the last room, that the candle had been carried. She remembered the light’s faint journey along the wing and imagined someone carrying a candle down the passageway, the light falling through the open doors and illuming each window in turn until it came here, to the end …
Except this was not the end. It could not be. She now had a vivid memory of counting the windows – there had been four. It was in the fourth window that the light had come to rest, not the third.
She stepped back into the passage. But there was no door beyond this one. She moved into the room – the floorboards groaning alarmingly beneath her. There was certainly only one window in this room – as there had been in all the others. She turned to the far wall of the chamber which was half obscured by the bed hangings. The door to the fourth room must be there.
She drew aside the torn, dirty silk, sending gritty dust into her hair and eyes. And there was the door. An unremarkable little door, such as one might find in any old house leading from a bedchamber into a dressing room. But there was one very remarkable thing about this door. There were three bolts fixed to it; sturdy bolts, slightly rusted, but still sound.
Two of the bolts were undone, the third half closed to hold the door in place. When Dido set her hand to draw this last bolt, it moved smoothly as if it had been recently released.
The door creaked open and there was the last room of the east wing: a narrow dressing room, bare, but a little cleaner than the outer room. Some of the plaster dust had been brushed from the floor; the counterpane on the small bed shaken. The only other furnishings were a table and a chair beside the tiny fire grate, and they had likewise been cleared of dust; rather roughly – the arc of a swiping hand or cloth was still visible. But it was the window which drew Dido’s eye. It was a casement window in solid stone embrasures. And into the old grey stones had been fastened a thick set of iron bars.
The little room was, in fact, a prison.
Dido sat down upon the bed; for several minutes she was too shocked for rational thought. But her head was full of a great many impressions. She felt the desolation of this deserted wing and the contrast that it made with the inhabited portion of the house, where the company was drinking its chocolate and coffee and eating its toast and chops. She felt the oddness of a hidden, empty place in the midst of life and bustle … And then her heart chilled at the wretched evidences in this room … evidences of restraint … imprisonment …
She looked from the bolts upon the door to the bars at the window and gradually reason began to assert itself over the horror of the moment.
This room had been made secure, and made secure for a purpose. The existence of a prison argued for a prisoner. She went to the window and set her hand to the bars. They chilled her hand and, as she slowly uncurled her fingers, she saw that they had left a red stain of rust. Rain had made its way in through the old window leads and, from the base of the bars, a thin red trickle lay, like blood, across the grey stone …
And there, beside the rust stain, was something scratched in the stone. She peered more closely at the place where daylight fell on the window sill. There were a great many scratches which looked like letters unsuccessfully formed. She studied them, but could make out nothing until she came at last to a pair of initials carved – as one sees such things sometimes scratched by tourists upon castle walls or druid stones. Two letters … She looked closer; traced the marks with a finger. FF? Yes, that was what it appeared to be. And four straight lines had been cut to enclose the letters. She looked along the window ledge and saw the same two letters, framed in the same manner, again – and again. And then, upon the stone mullion, she found them repeated three more times.
The repetition spoke of the monotony of a confined life. But the engraving was not freshly cut. It appeared to be years old – as old perhaps as the rusted bars. And yet, someone had recently been here. The dust had been disturbed – and the bolts upon the door had been drawn …
Chapter Seventeen
… The existence of this prison room is excessively disturbing!
For whom was it designed? Francine Fenstanton? The carved initials suggest it. And Miss Emma seemed to identify the chambers in the east wing as belonging to her …
But the room has been visited recently. And I confess that the discovery has raised an alarming notion in my head. It has revived my idea of Mr Lancelot acting a part from a horrid novel. But now I am not imagining him consigning an unwilling Miss Verney to a remote farmhouse, but contriving instead to shut her away in his own home. It would be a more convenient and economical villainy. And – upon the evidence of fiction – one not infrequently resorted to; though it is a stratagem more often employed by the lords of castles in the Alps and Pyrenees than by country gentlemen in modest English manor houses.
But the idea that Miss Verney is still within the house haunts me. Eliza, I wonder whether this is the secret which Miss Gibbs is keeping, the information which she dare not share. I must talk with her alone again – and find out all I can about the circumstances of Miss Verney’s disappearance. I hope I may manage it when the dressing hour arrives …
But, for the time being, I am confined to our aunt’s chamber. She has been restless and ill at ease since I returned from Charcombe yesterday with tidings of the murder; and this morning she is suffering from a headache of the ‘squeezing, throbbing’ variety. She has insisted upon Mr Sutherland being summoned and he is now in consultation with her.
* * *
Dido looked across the chamber. The blinds were closed – for sunlight was a great aggravation of the squeezing and throbbing – and it was extremely gloomy. On the other side of the single candle sat the elderly maid, Benson, straining to see her thread as she stitched away at a new pair of green silk slippers for her mistress. Beyond her, Mrs Manners lay gracefully upon her sofa, her hands clasped upon her breast. The long, lean figure of the physician loomed attentively over her, murmuring in sympathetic tones …
* * *
Mr Sutherland is at present applying ‘electrical tractors’ to the palpitations in Aunt Manners’ temples. And, much to my astonishment, he seems to be having some success in relieving her symptoms.
When this novel treatment was first mooted, I imagined some large, extravagant machine such as one sometimes sees demonstrated in Bath and Tunbridge. But the electrical tractors are in fact nothing more than two tapering metal rods, rather like short, thick knitting pins, which must, according to M
r Sutherland, be applied to the seat of pain to ‘draw off the poisonous electrical fluid which is causing the poor lady’s suffering’.
He is busy about it now. The doctor sits beside the sofa, talking constantly in a low, soothing voice and passing the ‘tractors’ to and fro across my aunt’s brow. He has been engaged upon the process for above a quarter of an hour, so I suppose there is a great deal of noxious fluid to be disposed of. Alarmed by his description of the process, I sent Benson to the kitchen to fetch a bowl in which this poisonous substance of pain might be collected. But I notice that it has not been needed; the electrical fluid would seem to be entirely invisible …
* * *
Dido looked again towards the sofa where Mrs Manners lay, with an expression of unusual tranquillity on her face. The doctor was leaning intently over his patient – the useless earthenware bowl on the table at his elbow. The medical process seemed to be reaching its end; he was talking ever more quietly, the metal rods were moving more slowly.
‘Och, now,’ he was saying gently, ‘the troublesome pain has all been drawn off. You had better sleep. Sleep peacefully and when you wake you will feel rested and refreshed.’
He ceased speaking, there was a long sigh from Benson and a snap as she broke off her thread, followed by slow steady breathing from Mrs Manners – who would seem to have done just as the doctor advised and fallen asleep. Which was quite remarkable, there having been no medicine of any colour consumed.
The doctor rose slowly and wrapped the electrical tractors in a square of white silk, folding in the corners with neat, meticulous movements and admirable precision.
‘She will probably sleep now for an hour,’ he said quietly to Dido, stretching his long body which was stiff with stooping over his patient. ‘A little tea when she awakes, perhaps. And – as I have explained to her – a little gentle exercise would do her a great deal of good. I shall call again tomorrow. The tractors must be applied daily.’
Dido, who was by no means at ease with invisible fluids and odd devices, opened her mouth to say … she hardly knew what. But then she caught Mr Sutherland’s sharp eye, and looked at her peacefully sleeping aunt … And was silenced.
She accompanied him out of the room, along the passageway and onto the gallery which ran above the hall. Here, where the light was stronger, Sutherland stopped and turned to her, his blue eyes disconcertingly sharp beneath the fall of white hair and the beetling black brows. ‘I think, Miss Kent, that you do not believe the tractors have any power.’
Dido coloured uncomfortably.
‘Aye!’ He shook his head with a smile. ‘You do not deny it, do you? And yet, neither can you deny that Mrs Manners’ symptoms have been relieved.’
‘I am very glad that my aunt’s headache is cured, but…’
‘But?’
His look was inviting; she could not resist speaking her thoughts. ‘But imagination is a powerful force, Mr Sutherland. It has long been observed that in the matter of health imagination will always play its part, and whether we regard ourselves as well or ill may depend a great deal upon our expectations.’
‘You would argue that her faith in the tractors was enough to work her cure?’
‘I am not sure that her faith rested in the electrical devices,’ admitted Dido with a smile. ‘I think perhaps it was vested in the man applying them. You are an old acquaintance of my aunt’s, and she was delighted when I delivered your card to her; she immediately felt that you would be able to help her.’
‘Och, I see what you are about, Miss Kent! You mean to flatter me out of my argument! But perhaps you can explain to me how this powerful force of imagination and expectation operates upon the constitution.’
‘I hardly know…’
‘And yet you do not doubt its effect! You cannot see this imagination. You cannot,’ he added with gentle mockery, ‘gather this imagination in a bowl. But you prefer to believe in its mysterious operation rather than in the force of electricity, the existence of which has long been proven.’
‘But…’ She stopped and stood for a moment gazing into his brilliant eyes, noticing how the black centres were oddly small – and yet seemed to contain within them tiny images of her own face. She could find no argument against him; though it was not in her nature to believe that there was no such argument.
‘Well, well,’ he said at last. ‘We are at least agreed that something is giving dear Mrs Manners relief from her headache. And I am sure you wish the treatment to continue.’
‘Oh, yes, of course,’ said Dido – suddenly very aware of how much a quietly sleeping, pain-free aunt was to be preferred over a querulous, irritable one. ‘Yes I quite agree.’
‘Then,’ he said with a bow, ‘I shall wait upon the lady again tomorrow. But I shall not come until the evening, for I understand that you must all look at Mr Brodie’s body in the morning.’
He started down the stairs, but his mentioning Mr Brodie had turned Dido’s thoughts from electrical treatments.
‘You mentioned to me, Mr Sutherland,’ she said, trotting down the stairs after him, ‘that you were with Mr Brodie on the last evening of his life.’
‘Yes, I was.’ He stood still, looking at her rather curiously. ‘I took my dinner at the inn that night and stayed until about eleven o’clock.’
‘Was Mr Brodie an acquaintance of yours?’
‘No, it was merely a chance meeting at an inn. We played a few hands of cards together – drank a little whisky. I confess,’ he added with a wink, ‘that a wager and a dram are my two great vices.’
Dido paused, her fingers tapping on the banister. ‘Then you do not know who in this house was a friend to Mr Brodie?’
‘No.’ And, though he had answered freely when her questions related to himself, there was something repressive in his voice now. He seemed … offended … no, not quite offended, but evasive …
His manner made Dido curious; and the opportunity of talking to someone who had met the dead man was not to be missed. ‘What kind of a man was Mr Brodie?’ she asked. ‘For you know, one cannot help but wonder about him. Dying always makes a person famous for a while.’
‘Aye! And being murdered raises a fellow’s fame even further!’
‘You blame me for being inquisitive?’ She searched his face; but it was utterly still, impossible to read. All she seemed to see were those disconcerting little reflections of herself staring out of his eyes.
‘No, lassie,’ he said at last, ‘I don’t blame you.’ He turned away and began to walk rather briskly down the stairs. ‘But I cannot tell you much. I was scarcely in the man’s company an hour. He seemed … unpolished and argumentative.’
‘And what did you and he – and Mr Tom Lomax – talk of over your cards and whisky?’
‘Chiefly cards and whisky as I recall. Och, yes!’ He stopped only three steps from the bottom of the stairs and looked back with a smile. ‘I remember – we talked of electricity and animal magnetism.’
‘Oh?’
‘Aye. Brodie had as poor an opinion of my methods as you have yourself, Miss Kent! He wanted to know whether such treatments were to be trusted. Said he’d heard fellows like me could put a kind of spell on folk and make them do as we wish.’
‘Did he indeed? What a horrid idea! And how did you reply to him?’
‘I told him if I had power such as that I’d have made folk give me all their money long ago and I’d be set up comfortably on my own estate now – not toiling away in Charcombe.’
He held out his hand and began to take his leave, but just then the outer door opened. Mr George Fenstanton walked into the hall and started up the stairs with little bouncing steps, saw Dido and Sutherland – and stopped abruptly. His breath whistled through his teeth. ‘You…?’ He glowered at the physician, his face and scalp reddening. ‘Why are you here?’
Mr Sutherland bowed and explained his attendance upon Mrs Manners – his tone cool, but civil.
‘In this house,’ whistled Mr George, ‘medical
men use the backstairs.’
‘Do they?’ replied Sutherland calmly, with a great appearance of interest. ‘How very unusual.’ He said no more, only stood waiting for Mr George to speak again, his brilliant stare fixed steadily upon the smaller man who was obliged to tilt his head up to meet it.
Dido waited for an angry explosion – but none came. George Fenstanton did not speak another word. After a short silence – filled by the insistent ticking of the hall clock – he turned away with lowered eyes, and, seeming to forget that he had intended to mount the stairs, he moved towards the breakfast room instead.
* * *
… Well, Eliza, wrote Dido rapidly when she had returned to her aunt’s chamber and her writing desk, what do you say to Mr Sutherland for a murderer?
If he left the inn at eleven o’clock, it is possible that he returned to meet Mr Brodie behind the inn – and shot him. A doctor’s bag would provide an excellent means of concealing a weapon, would it not?
The chief obstacle to this very convenient explanation of events is a thorough absence of motive. Mr Sutherland says that he had never met Mr Brodie before that night; and it would seem unlikely that he should – in the course only of a card game – conceive such an antipathy as to make the man’s death essential to his happiness …
But, though I cannot – as yet – find any cause for him being a murderer, I do have reason to suspect that Mr Sutherland knows something of Miss Verney’s disappearance. The fishwives’ information suggests that he has been the cause of that business being bruited abroad; and his cold meeting with Mr George – together with the remarks of the lady who keeps his house – give a reason for his gossiping.
It would seem there is some animosity between him and the Fenstanton family. And my aunt’s rambling remarks under the influence of brown medicine rather suggest that that animosity arose from his attendance upon her sister Francine thirty years ago …
Chapter Eighteen
When the dressing bell rang that afternoon, Dido approached Miss Gibbs with a very friendly smile – and an offer of assistance.