A Place of Confinement: The Investigations of Miss Dido Kent (Dido Kent Mysteries)

by Dean, Anna

  Emma’s smiling dimples disappeared abruptly. She dropped her eyes, ran a finger around the edge of the book’s cover. ‘I do not understand you, Miss Kent.’

  ‘Your little arrangement with the bookbinder is not your only secret, is it? You have other schemes in hand?’

  ‘Now, why should you suspect me?’ cried Emma, clutching her book to her as if it were a breastplate to ward off attack.

  ‘Because,’ said Dido looking at her levelly, ‘you have shown yourself to be quite determined to prove Mr Tom Lomax innocent of the crimes charged against him. And I cannot help but wonder why you are so very concerned about a young man you have never met.’

  Emma’s dimples returned. She cast up her eyes to the finely moulded plaster of the library ceiling. ‘Perhaps you suspect me of being secretly acquainted with Mr Lomax,’ she mused playfully. ‘Perhaps you suspect me of being in love with him.’

  ‘Perhaps I do.’

  ‘Why, what a very interesting woman you think me, Miss Kent! I am quite flattered! But in fact I am very dull, you know. I give you my word that I have never met the young man. And – being so very dull as I am – I have not the knack of falling in love with gentlemen I do not know.’

  ‘But I will not believe that you are dull at all, Miss Fenstanton. I know that you have some other secret to hide. Come now, I have obliged you with the quiet return of your book. Will you not oblige me by satisfying my curiosity.’ She smiled invitingly. ‘Please tell me why you like to come alone to this room.’

  Emma looked uncertain. Dido began to hope …

  But her hopes were cruelly dashed by the opening of the library door.

  ‘So this is where you are hiding, Emma!’ Mr George’s perspiring face appeared around the door’s edge. ‘Make haste! Make haste and come into the garden. Lancelot is asking for you.’

  Emma rose quickly, threw one mischievous smile in Dido’s direction, and was gone. Father and daughter could be heard crossing the hall; he in full flow of disapproval of her ‘hiding herself away indoors, and spoiling her eyes with too much reading…’

  As his complaints faded away into the garden, Dido railed inwardly against her ill luck, and wondered whether another ten minutes might have produced anything of interest. Perhaps they might; but Miss Fenstanton was a difficult subject for investigation. She seemed to delight in subterfuge for its own sake …

  So absorbed was Dido in these considerations that it was several minutes before her eye fell upon the workbox which had been left behind on the library table.

  She stared at it a moment as if she feared that it too might be snatched away from her. Then she went to the door and looked out into the hall. She wished to be quite certain of privacy. Only when she was sure that she was alone did she return and cautiously lift the lid of the workbox.

  Inside, the housekeeper’s paper-wrapped package lay among the coloured cottons, the scissors and the needle cards. A little grease had seeped from it and stained the pink silk lining.

  Dido drew back a corner of the paper – and revealed a freshly cooked chicken leg.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  … Well, Eliza, why should any young woman go to such trouble to convey a chicken leg into a deserted library? I had not put Miss Fenstanton down for a secret eater! I have known girls who seek to satisfy in private an appetite which they consider indelicate to reveal at table, but I am quite sure that Miss Emma has no such overstrained notions of refinement.

  So I cannot doubt that it was her intention for the chicken to be consumed by someone else. But who is this eater of roast chicken? I can see for myself that there is no one here in the library …

  * * *

  Dido stopped and looked about rather uneasily – almost expecting to see this hungry person watching from among the books. But the shelves and the panelled walls stretched blankly about her. The only watching eyes were the distinctly malevolent ones of the ram above the fireplace.

  She got to her feet and made a slow circuit of the room, running her hand carefully over books and wooden panels. There was no sign of any hiding place … And yet, she thought, considering the style of the room … and the age of the Charcombe Manor …

  An idea darted into her brain.

  Pausing only to lock her letter away in her writing desk, Dido ran out of the room. She sped across the hall, took the shallow stairs two at a time, and did not stop until she had cleared the second flight and arrived at the very top of the house.

  The long gallery was silent and deserted; the sun shone in through the south-facing windows onto the worn matting, white walls – and the disapproving Elizabethan lady. Dido approached her slowly over gently creaking boards and was gratified to find that she had remembered correctly – there was, indeed, a rosary in the white tapering fingers.

  She peered up at the picture, and found it an old, indistinct thing; an indifferent likeness of a forgotten ancestor, such as hang by the dozen upon the walls of country houses everywhere, grimed over with the dust and smoke of more than a century, turning slowly to the uniform colour of chocolate and disregarded entirely by family and visitors alike. The lady seemed to be fading into her background, her broad skirts now barely distinguishable from the dark room in which she stood.

  Dido clambered onto the chamber horse in her eagerness to read the picture and, swaying precariously on its protesting springs, brought her face close to the canvas. From here it was just possible to make out a little of the background – though it all seemed to swim in a brownish fog. Beyond the broad blue sleeves and the crimped white edges of the lady’s ruff, the corner of a chimney piece could just be made out. There was an overmantel of dark wood – with the head of a ram carved upon it.

  ‘Exactly as I thought!’ she cried, just before losing her balance and stumbling backward onto the floor.

  But even the fall could not diminish her spirits. She sat down upon the chamber horse and gave several little bounces of triumph. Her mind was rapidly filling with ideas about Miss Fenstanton and her secrets. She began – like a woman sewing patchwork – to fashion a very serviceable theory from bits and scraps of observations which had individually seemed to be of little value.

  She thought about a little ghost crying in the night; the mysterious figure creeping from the garden to the library; she thought about a round depression in the moss of the path; she thought of thick black slugs, and of the Elizabethan lady’s piety; she thought about the scratch upon Miss Fenstanton’s hand and the concern of that young lady to prove Tom innocent; and she thought about the rather weak excuse given for that concern …

  At last she paused to consider her fine new piece of patchwork. The pattern of it was remarkably satisfying. But there was yet one detail missing. There was one enquiry to be made without delay. She rose from the chamber horse, determined upon risking her aunt’s displeasure and escaping the house for a few minutes.

  For it had become absolutely imperative that she consult with young Charlie and his assistant in the stables.

  * * *

  ‘I have been thinking about the story of Charcombe’s little ghost,’ Dido remarked to Mr Lancelot later that day as they were walking together along the shady road which led beside the river to the village of Old Charcombe. ‘In particular I have been wondering where exactly Lady Fenstanton is reputed to have hidden her child.’

  ‘Ha! I am sure I don’t know.’ He considered a moment. ‘No, I never heard where the child was put.’

  Dido was a little disappointed in drawing a blank here for, in general, the gentleman seemed in the mood for confidence. He had insisted upon accompanying her on her walk to the village and seemed to be taking pleasure in her company. They had been talking very comfortably about his house and grounds, and she was in hopes of learning a little more about his family. For recent discoveries (in particular the spoiling of the silk slippers) had led her to suspect that the mysteries surrounding her might be rooted in the past of Charcombe Manor.

  ‘I wonder,’ she pursued
, ‘whether there is any record of the story written down. I remember Mr George saying that his sister, Miss Francine Fenstanton, read old books in the library. Perhaps she found it written in a book there.’

  ‘Perhaps she did. The library was certainly a valuable resource to poor Aunt Francine, for she led a very confined life.’ He frowned – as if painful memories had been awakened.

  ‘I am sorry,’ said Dido quickly. ‘It is a fault of mine – when I am very interested in a subject I become impertinent. Please forgive me.’

  ‘No,’ he said gently. ‘There was no impertinence.’ But his thoughts seemed to have become fixed upon his aunt and he shortly broke out with: ‘It is thirty years since Aunt Francine died, you know. Thirty years since Charcombe Manor had a woman’s civilising presence! It is a period, is it not?’

  ‘It is indeed.’

  ‘It is too long for a house to be without a woman’s gentle influence. I fear the old place has suffered for it.’ He regarded her very seriously, pushing back his hat with a thick, strong finger. ‘And perhaps I too have suffered,’ he suggested. ‘I have not – since I was eleven years old – enjoyed the daily companionship of a woman.’

  He stopped walking and laid his hand diffidently over hers, in a manner which must have been suspected by any woman whose mind was not entirely occupied with the pursuit of a murderer.

  But, as they stood close together beneath a great oak with the sunlight twinkling through the leaves, the sound of the river and birdsong filling the air, Dido was thinking rather more about Mr Fenstanton’s family and the mysteries carrying on in his house than she was about the gentleman himself. The earnest look of his brown eyes was entirely lost upon her.

  ‘Miss Francine Fenstanton was sickly, I believe,’ she said.

  ‘Oh! Yes, she suffered from a great many nervous disorders.’

  ‘As my Aunt Manners does?’

  ‘Yes, but in those days – when she was young – Aunt Selina was quite well. I believe all her illnesses began with her marriage. As a girl she was always stout and confident – much more easy with the world than her poor sister.’

  ‘But,’ continued Dido, starting to walk busily forward and forcing her companion to do the same, ‘despite their different characters, the sisters were attached to one another?’

  ‘They were devoted. Why do you ask so particularly about it?’

  ‘Oh!’ She looked up into his face, and, receiving an indistinct impression of intimacy, decided upon a direct question. ‘I cannot help but wonder,’ she confessed, ‘whether the cause of my aunt’s disagreement with her brothers – the reason why she has been so long absent from Charcombe – was some dislike of the way her sister was treated.’

  ‘Ha! You have the right of it there!’ he cried. ‘My father and uncle were very stern guardians of their sisters. Very determined that they should make good marriages, you know. And Aunt Selina believes that their unkindness was an aggravation of Aunt Francine’s illness.’

  ‘I see.’ Dido began insensibly to walk faster as she pursued her own thoughts, and the unfortunate Mr Fenstanton was obliged to lengthen his own stride.

  ‘It is an old story,’ he said, with the dismissive air of a man who has subjects of his own to pursue. ‘My dear Miss Kent, I would not have you think I share their philosophy. Mercenary marriages! I ain’t got patience with them. Affection is the thing to my mind. Happiness in marriage is more important than fortune, ain’t it?’ As he spoke he again laid his hand over hers and attempted to draw her to a standstill. But he saw that he had now lost her attention entirely.

  For they had just turned the last corner of the lane, and the village was before them: a cluster of grey cottages lay beyond the high curving back of the bridge; there were a few thin blue spires of smoke ascending from the chimneys, and the hot red glow of a forge reflecting in the river.

  And, on the bridge, Mr Lomax was waiting, with one foot resting on the low wall and his eyes cast thoughtfully down toward the water.

  Dido excused herself hurriedly and ran forward to meet him, holding out her hands and turning her face up to his with affectionate concern.

  ‘Your enquiries are not prospering?’ she asked anxiously after a hurried greeting.

  ‘No,’ he said, turning towards her with a sigh. ‘I have not been able to trace the chaise beyond the first toll gate on the Bristol road. Beyond that the tolls and the staging posts are too busy – nobody was able to distinguish one carriage from another. And no one at the school in Taunton was able to even guess at where the young lady might be – if she is not with Mrs Hargreaves. Everyone seems to be agreed that that would be her most likely recourse if she left her guardians.’

  ‘I see.’ Dido was sorry to have so little information – and sorrier still for the pain his failure caused him. His eyes were so dark she thought he must not have slept at all since their last meeting. ‘And were you able to discover anything about the lady’s character?’

  ‘Yes – a little.’ He frowned upon the water and Dido stepped closer so that she might look up into his face in an attempt to read his thoughts. ‘There was general agreement,’ he said, ‘among both teachers and pupils, that Miss Verney is unlikely to elope.’

  ‘She is an amenable, docile girl?’

  ‘Oh no! Nobody seemed to doubt that she has spirit enough for an elopement. But everyone is in agreement that she is not sufficiently romantic. Miss Verney, I am told, thinks too well of herself and her fortune to throw herself away.’ He smiled. ‘As you may imagine, her teachers are inclined to call her sensible – while her fellow pupils condemn her for being too worldly.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Dido with a smile. ‘The distorting effect of youth!’

  ‘I prefer,’ he said gravely, ‘to think that age and experience may also distort a little, and that the truth lies between the two extremes.’

  ‘Very well. We shall agree that Miss Verney is rather sensible – and just a little bit worldly. But,’ she added with a shake of her head, ‘the conclusion must be that she is unlikely to have run away to Gretna Green.’

  ‘That was my conclusion,’ he said. ‘Until, just as I was leaving, one young lady – a Miss Garnett who had been the most voluble in condemning her fellow pupil as mercenary – stopped me. She told me that, just before she left the school, Miss Verney had said something to her that was a little odd.’ He paused. ‘It was very odd,’ he admitted. ‘I know not what to make of it.

  ‘It seems that Miss Garnett had been chiding her friend for coldness, telling her that she would never be happy in marriage if she did not truly love her husband – it is not difficult to imagine the eloquence of nineteen upon such a subject. And it seems Miss Verney laughed at the tirade; she laughed, and she said: very well, she would give romance one trial – and if nothing came of it then she would settle for a worldly union.’

  ‘Oh!’ cried Dido, laying her hands upon his arm. ‘I wonder what she meant by that. Is it possible that this running away is the trial she spoke of?’

  ‘Perhaps it is. Miss Garnett could tell me nothing about the “trial”. She said only that it sounded like “one of Letitia’s mad schemes”. But, as to the worldly union – she had more definite ideas about that. She believes that there is “an old man” that Miss Verney has known all her life. A man her guardians wish her to marry. Miss Garnett did not know the name of this poor decrepit old fellow, but—’

  ‘But,’ Dido finished for him, ‘it is almost certainly Mr Lancelot!’ As she spoke she turned instinctively to the place where she had left that gentleman. And much to her surprise, she found that he was still standing in the shade of the trees.

  He was glowering in their direction and his look of disapproval made Dido uneasy. Lomax had followed the direction of her eyes and he also seemed to notice the frown, for he immediately drew Dido’s hand through his arm with an air of protection and possession.

  Fenstanton’s face clouded. He kicked irritably at a tree root.

  The couple turned away
towards the village. But Mr Fenstanton stood still for several minutes. He appeared to be lost in the contemplation of new ideas which the scene had suggested to him.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Old Charcombe village was small and poor – and rather honest; it did not rise to the dignity of possessing a gaol. It had instead a little stone-built chamber commonly called ‘the lock-up’. Besides accommodating drunkards, vagrants and wrongdoers awaiting trial, the lock-up earned its keep by housing a dismantled pillory and the parish bier on which the people of Charcombe were carried to their graves. The building stood in the centre of the village, beside the stone bench from which the fishermen sold their catches every morning and, being so conveniently placed, it frequently contained a basket or two of ageing mackerel.

  The place stank – as gaols are supposed to do, though not perhaps in quite the usual way.

  The gaoler who conducted Dido and Mr Lomax down a short, sloping passage to the single cell was an enterprising man: he worked upon the fishing boats and was sexton of the church when he was not guarding the felons of Charcombe. He was a big hearty-looking fellow with weather-beaten cheeks and a knitted cap, and had neither the shuffling gait nor the blackened teeth which Dido’s reading of novels had led her to expect of a turnkey.

  Though he did not lack a keen eye to his own interest. It had cost Mr Lomax a half-guinea to get them thus far – and another shilling when he had insisted upon a stool being brought so that Dido might be seated during the interview.

  ‘Five minutes,’ the gaoler declared as he opened the cell door. ‘I can’t be allowing y’more than that. For it’s right against the rules y’being here at all. And if I’d not got such a soft heart…’

  ‘You would be a good deal poorer,’ Mr Lomax finished for him.

  ‘Aye, that I would!’ The gaoler laughed delightedly, pushed open the creaking door and set the stool down inside the cell. ‘Five minutes,’ he reminded them as he stepped back for them to enter.

  Dido suspected that his notion of five minutes was vague – for she doubted he possessed a watch, and she fervently hoped that his ideas erred in the right direction, for five minutes would certainly not settle all the matters she wished to discuss.