A Woman of Consequence mdk-3

by Anna Dean

  There was moonlight falling through the tall windows of Miss Fenn’s chamber as Dido quietly opened the door. Behind her, the faint strains of the first dance were echoing up the stairs; and before her the shape of the window was drawn in white light across the floorboards and a broad square of Turkey carpet. The light fell diagonally across the high bed, catching the corner of the bedside table and the old black bible lying upon it.

  She tiptoed into the room – going first to the bible to reassure herself that the letter was still there within the back cover, then to the window seat, where she found that only a little rearranging of a curtain would conceal her. And there, with her cheek resting against the cold glass, she waited, her ears straining to catch the sound of approaching feet, and her eyes becoming gradually more accustomed to the faint light, until even the curving tails of the Chinese birds were distinguishable on the bed-hangings.

  Who would come?

  Henry Coulson. It would be Henry Coulson for sure, she told herself. For there was the name to consider. Did not ‘little Harrys’ always grow into men called Henry? And the account Harriet had given of Mr Coulson was so vague – nothing was known here in Madderstone of his parentage, save what he had told himself …

  Yes, it would be Henry Coulson – she would not even countenance the other darker thoughts which kept trying to insinuate themselves into her brain. And yet, those darker thoughts had prompted her to lay the trap wide – including in its scope everyone who might possibly be the thief. She had let them all know of the letter’s existence …

  There was a slight sound out in the passageway. She lifted her feet onto the window seat and drew the curtain about her. Steps approached rapidly – as if the walker knew exactly where he was going – then stopped outside the door of the chamber. There was a pause, filled by the faint sound of a waltz.

  The lock turned. The door opened slowly. Dido’s hands tightened about her knees. The light of a candle flickered round the room and footsteps – firm, but light – crept across the floor, tap-tapping on the boards, softer on the carpet. Now the intruder was come to the bed. And – straining for it – she caught the sound of a candle being set down, the sound of pages turning. And then, as she held her breath and listened with every fibre of her being, Dido detected the one noise she had most dreaded hearing – the slight rustle of a silk gown.

  It struck her like a blow in the face: confirming all her worst fears – and making her angry. She jumped to her feet, pushing aside the curtain and flooding the chamber with moonlight.

  The figure by the bed gave a cry, dropping letter and bible together, and the candlelight showed the white staring face – of Harriet Crockford.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  For a moment the two friends could only stand and stare rather foolishly at one another.

  ‘I hoped so much,’ stammered Dido at last, ‘that it would not be you, Harriet. I would rather it had been anyone else …’

  ‘It was a trick!’ cried Harriet and the hurt of betrayal was as strong in her voice as it was in Dido’s. ‘You meant me to come here. That is why you told me about the letter.’

  ‘I told everyone about it,’ Dido reminded her. ‘But I knew the only person who would come to retrieve it was the person who stole the rest of Miss Fenn’s correspondence.’

  ‘But you suspected me of being that person?’

  ‘I could not help but suspect you after you lied so very badly to me in the carriage. When you tried to convince me that Mr Coulson had taken the letters, I knew that you must have something to hide.’

  ‘How did you know …?’

  ‘Oh Harriet! it was so very obvious. You said that you were on your own in Penelope’s room when you heard Mr Coulson pass the door. But, by your own account, Mr Paynter had come up with you immediately after dinner to see his patient. You were not alone until after the surgeon left you. And it was as he left that Mr Harman-Foote came to the room – and found the desk already empty. Mr Coulson could not have taken the letters.’

  ‘Oh.’ Harriet suddenly became aware that the letter itself was lying still upon the floor, she picked it up hastily and stowed it away in her pocket. ‘You shall not have it,’ she said, setting her chin determinedly.

  ‘I do not need it. I know what it says – and I know who sent it.’

  Harriet sat down upon the bed. ‘And what do you mean to do about it?’ she asked with a great attempt at calm.

  ‘That,’ said Dido, turning away to the window, ‘rather depends upon you, Harriet. It depends upon whether you are prepared to right those crimes and injustices which you have been trying so hard to conceal.’ She fixed her eyes upon the lopped trunks of the trees below the window which appeared like fallen giants in the moonlight. ‘And you must start by telling me the whole truth of what you know and why you took the other letters.’

  ‘Dido, please, it will do no good. There is no need to rake up what is past. Least said …’

  ‘Least said soonest mended!’ cried Dido, turning upon her angrily. ‘Harriet, I cannot believe that even now you will quote maxims instead of really speaking to me! Let sleeping dogs lie – that was Dear Papa’s favourite saying, was it not?’

  ‘I shall not stay to hear you speak disrespectfully of my father!’

  ‘Yes you shall!’ cried Dido, more angry than ever. ‘Upon my word you shall. For if you do not, I will speak to Mr Wishart instead.’

  ‘You would not!’ said Harriet and, although she made no appeal to their friendship, the thought of it filled the grand bedchamber as real as the moonlight and the faint scraping of the fiddles.

  Dido hesitated.

  ‘How long have you suspected me?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘Almost from the beginning. Though I have tried hard to put the thought away from me. I believe it was when the ring was stolen that the first doubts intruded. Mrs Harman-Foote said something interesting then. She said that a visitor could not wander away to her bedchamber without her knowing about it. And I could not help but think that there was one visitor who had an unusual degree of freedom in this house. Your role as Penelope’s nurse would enable you to move about the upper floors undetected.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And of course, you were quite determined to nurse Penelope – and to nurse her alone. Even Lucy noticed your determination – though she entirely misunderstood its cause. Why Harriet? What was the real cause? Were you perhaps afraid of what Penelope might say in delirium?’ Dido left the window and began to pace restlessly about the room, finding some relief in movement and words. ‘And when I insisted upon your having a companion in the labour, your choice was very telling indeed. You chose the oldest servant in your household – the oldest, the most loyal and, I suspect, the one who already knew the secrets of your family. Indeed, I am convinced that, besides yourself, old Nanny is the only person alive who knows those secrets.’

  Harriet only clutched at the post of the bed, following Dido’s restless motion with her eyes. ‘Tell me what you know,’ she said.

  ‘Enough. More than enough, I assure you. I know who sent that letter.’

  ‘But how? How can you know it?’ ‘From the writing. Oh you tried very hard to deceive me when we talked about it in Bath. Silas’s hand is so like that of the letter I could not doubt that he had been taught by the man who wrote it. But Silas was educated at home …’

  ‘Not entirely.’

  ‘No – you tried to mislead me by mentioning Mr Portinscale. But that would not do. Silas might have learnt Latin from the local clergyman, but he would not have gone to him to learn his letters.’ Dido stopped walking and fixed her friend with an earnest gaze. ‘It was your father who taught Silas to write, was it not?’

  Harriet looked stubborn.

  ‘Oh why will you not admit it? I believe you are reluctant to confess it all even to yourself!’ She began again to pace about the room. ‘Your father taught Silas to write – and there is a likeness in their writing. The hand in the letter seemed familiar to me
because your father wrote it. Admit it, Harriet. Please admit it. Your father sent letters to Miss Fenn – letters which you were determined to destroy, because they revealed the … arrangement which he had entered into with her …’

  ‘Oh hush, hush,’ cried Harriet, flapping her hands. ‘“Prating tongues never …”’

  ‘No Harriet!’ cried Dido in exasperation. ‘If we must have proverbs, let us try this: “Tell the truth and put the devil to flight”!’

  Harriet moaned gently. ‘You cannot know so much, it is impossible …’ She stopped herself; afraid of what she was admitting.

  ‘I do,’ said Dido, putting her hand to her brow. ‘When looked at in one way all the evidence began to make sense. Little details which had only made me uneasy before, took on entirely new meanings: things like Silas’s poem …’

  ‘Silas’s poem? Indeed, I certainly do not understand you now!’

  ‘No?’ Dido paced to the side of the bed, picked up the bible and set it gently on its table again – rather as if she would propitiate the ghost which haunted the room. ‘At first,’ she said, ‘I thought it was only the hand those verses were written in that disturbed me. But then I found I couldn’t get them out of my mind and – despite my affection for your brother – I could not quite believe it was his excellence as a poet which had fixed his words in my brain.’

  Dido looked down at Harriet sitting upon the bed in her pale evening gown. The candle standing beside her showed a long strand of hair which had escaped the silk bands of her headdress, hanging down across one ear. A pink rose pinned at her breast had shed petals into her lap. Her eyes were fixed – she was merely waiting. It would perhaps be kindest to continue – to tell all she knew and hope to convince Harriet that further pretence was impossible.

  ‘There are, in fact, three interesting points about the poem,’ she said. ‘There is, first of all, the use of the endearment ‘beloved’ and the expressions of unswerving affection which Silas uses – ideas which put me very much in mind of Miss Fenn when I read them. To begin with, I thought that perhaps Silas had somehow read a similar letter to the one I had seen – that perhaps Mr Coulson was our thief and he had shown the letters to him. But now I know that Mr Coulson has had no hand in this – and I think instead that Silas had actually heard her declarations.’

  ‘Oh!’ Again Harriet’s hands moved rapidly in a suppressing motion – as if she could not bear to have such things said aloud.

  But Dido hardened her heart and standing at the foot of the bed, she continued. ‘Silas is no genius,’ she said. ‘A little opium might inspire a great romantic to compose exquisite poetry. But for a dear, prosaic boy like Silas, the only visions that came were drawn from … memory. Memories which are lost to his waking mind.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Harriet, shaking her head violently.

  Dido could not but take the denial for confirmation. ‘You see, the second point of interest is that verse of description with which the poem opens.’ She turned her eyes upon the window and quoted:

  ‘The moonlight floats upon the pool

  And gleams on grass and sedge.

  The dew lies thick. The woman’s skirts

  Are darkened at the edge.

  ‘It is, when considered carefully, a rather, unusual description, is it not?’ she asked.

  ‘It is certainly not very great poetry,’ said Harriet in a choking voice which struggled for indifference.

  ‘No – but why should he choose to describe the hem of her skirts?’

  ‘I hardly know.’ Harriet now sounded genuinely puzzled.

  ‘Do you not? I do. The answer is given in the next verse – She bends and presses close her love. Harriet, why must the nun bend down to embrace her love? And why is the writer of the poem looking at her skirts?’

  There was no reply. Now Harriet was beginning to catch her meaning and was thrown back into silence.

  ‘She must bend,’ continued Dido quietly, ‘because it is a child to whom she is bidding farewell. The whole scene is described from a child’s point of view!’

  She turned away from the bed and moved restlessly to the window. Gazing out into the strange, distorting white light of the moon, she looked beyond the fallen giants to the broken outline of the ruins – all black and indistinct in the moonlight, but for the great east window standing out gaunt against sky – and the dark line of trees which marked the old pool. Their crowding shadows seemed capable of hiding all manner of meetings and partings and secrets …

  ‘It was down there, beside the pool that he bade farewell to his mother, was it not? When he was five years old.’

  She looked back and was just in time to see Harriet raising her hands to cover her ears. ‘You know full well,’ she cried, ‘that our mother died when Silas was born.’

  ‘No.’ Dido went back to her and gently removed the hands, holding them firmly in her own. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Silas’s mother died here in the pool – two years after that parting. She died because she wished the man to whom she had given her son to relinquish him. And he could not bear to do that. The boy was too important to him.’

  Harriet merely held her eyes in a tortured stare. Dido found herself wishing for tears – they would at least seem natural. But Harriet was not by nature a weeper. ‘You see, I was sure that someone had killed in order to avoid giving up the child. So I looked about Badleigh and Madderstone to determine who might have stood in such desperate need of a son that he might kill in order to retain him. And who, I thought, could need a son more keenly than a man with a dead wife, two dearly loved daughters – and an entailed estate?’ Dido’s lips were stiff, reluctant to pronounce the words which seemed like a death blow to her friend. ‘Mr Edward Crockford,’ she said, ‘the man who was so very determined to provide for his daughters – he would have had a powerful motive for murder.’

  Suddenly Harriet gave a cry that had more of tortured animal in it than human being; seizing her candle she jumped up and ran to the hearth, took the letter from her pocket and held its corner to the flame.

  ‘You will never prove anything!’ she cried as the yellow light of burning paper flared across her pale, terrified face. ‘The other letters were all destroyed weeks ago.’

  Dido watched the paper burn: watched grey ash fall from it onto the fender. It was a satisfying sight, for she saw in it the final defeat of Captain Laurence. Now, all the letters were gone. Congreve would never know the truth!

  Harriet dropped the burning letter into the hearth and fell onto her knees, her hands covering her head as if the accusation was a blow from which she must protect herself.

  In spite of everything, Dido’s heart rebuked her for unkindness as she looked down upon the bowed head, the clutching hands. Never had she been more inclined to condemn her own love of mysteries. That her curiosity had led her at last to this – to the torture of a friend! And yet … it could not be right to rest content with half-truths when they concealed past crimes – and present injustice …

  ‘Harriet, please listen to me.’ She knelt down by the hearth and gently pulled Harriet’s hands away from her ears. ‘You cannot hide the truth in this way. I do not need the letter for evidence – there is another proof.’

  ‘What?’ cried Harriet, her eyes wide, the muscles in her face working in anxiety. ‘What is this other proof?’

  Dido looked down at their joined hands. Harriet had ceased to struggle against her now and her hands lay passive, as if she awaited her own sentence of death. ‘Yesterday,’ she said, ‘I looked at the pieces of gold and silver taken from the lake with Miss Fenn’s body. Harriet, they are not all coins.’

  ‘Not coins?’ repeated Harriet. ‘I do not understand you. What are they?’

  ‘Two of the pieces which I had at first taken for misshapen shillings, are buttons – silver buttons – just such as your father wore.’

  ‘No! No! I will not listen to you.’

  ‘You must. Those buttons were torn from his coat as that poor woman struggled again
st him.’

  Harriet began to tremble. Her hands twisted until they were gripping her friend’s. Her eyes pleaded. Her lips moved again – but no sound came from them.

  ‘You have known it all the time, have you not?’ said Dido. ‘That is why you have been working against me to obscure the truth – taking the letters and the ring. But now,’ she continued with all the force of conviction, ‘you must listen to me. You must help me put right some of the wrong that your father did. If you do not, I swear I will take those buttons to Mr Wishart and tell him that his inquest must be reopened.’

  ‘I do not know what to do,’ said Harriet, her eyes darting desperately to and fro. ‘I do not know what Papa would have wanted …’

  ‘No! No! You must not think of what he would want. The time has come, Harriet, to think for yourself.’

  Harriet only stared wildly. In the silence, the ghostly strains of a violin just beginning upon Montgomery’s Reel crept into the chamber. The two women faced each other over the candle’s flame, the light flickering across their cheeks and throwing long shadows up the pale chimney piece and seeming to make the birds and foliage move upon the bed-hangings. Dido looked defiantly into her friend’s eyes. Pity was tearing at her – but she must not give in to it. There was a greater duty to be performed here than the everyday obligation of friendship. Justice must be done. She gripped tighter at the cold hands which lay unmoving in her grasp.

  And then, at last, Harriet bowed her head. ‘He had no choice,’ she said, her voice scarcely above a whisper. ‘It all started in kindness to my mother, you see. She was dying – the only thing she wished to hear was that she had borne a son. She asked … He could not hurt her. He told her that the baby was a boy … And after that …’ She broke down, shaking her head helplessly.