by Jane Jakeman
“Mrs. Romey, we were having a conversation earlier on which was…interrupted.”
That was the best term I could find to describe Charnock’s abrupt incursion earlier on, when we had probably been on the point of learning something germane.
The housekeeper was clearing away my plate; now she brought out something else from the larder. It was a china mold covered with a plate, and she proceeded to turn out a quivering translucence of a rich wine color. “Claret jelly,” she said, and laid a silver spoon and a small jug of thick cream in front of me.
“You have added a little something to this…” I hazarded a guess. “Good cooks always do.”
She beamed. “Some raspberry preserve. Oh, and the juice of a lemon, just to sharpen it up a little.”
“Of course! How inspired!”
“You must try my Dutch flummery sometime.”
“Er, yes.”
I’m sure it was delicious, whatever it might have been. But now I had to get her off the subject.
“Mrs. Romey, now that Master Cyriack Jesmond is dead—”
She was turning away from the table, but swung back suddenly, and took up my sentence as if I had intended it to mean that Cyriack’s death was a blessing, which perhaps it might have been. “But it was little comfort to see Candless in the church, that I can tell you, Lord Ambrose,” she confided.
“Who is he? He has the air of a lawyer.”
“You are right enough. He is Sir Antony’s man of business, come from Bristol, I suppose, to make ready a new will.”
“In connection with the death of Master Cyriack Jesmond? Under the old will he would have been the heir, presumably, after her ladyship s lifetime?”
That was the usual arrangement. The widow would enjoy the estate and its income until her death and then it would pass to the eldest son. Lady Jesmond, of course, was Cyriack’s stepmother, but that would presumably have made no difference to the legal arrangements.
To my surprise, the housekeeper seemed suddenly to be boiling with rage.
“Yes, my lord, that is the usual arrangement, I believe, but, curse Sir Antony’s heart and eyes, something else was intended here! When Sir Antony died, her ladyship was only to have an income from the estate as long as she did not—”
“Did not remarry? But that is a usual provision, is it not? Perhaps somewhat mean-spirited, but not uncommon.”
“Not only that. If she was to…to engage in…I believe the words are ‘to engage in any illicit connection’!”
“If she were to have a lover—is that it?”
“Yes. I did not want to say it, but that’s what it meant. Anyway, if that were to happen, the whole thing would go immediately to Cyriack—to that creature, who wasn’t fit to wipe her ladyship’s shoes! And she would not get another penny!”
“The will spelled that out? But, surely, there was no danger. All she had to do was to maintain a spotless reputation,” I said quietly.
“Yes, and she is the most innocent lamb that ever walked! But even putting something like that in the will, you see, and making it known—why, that would make people think! It would make them look out for anything—any small thing that might suggest she’s guilty. You know what folk are! That was the will Candless drew up for Sir Antony but ten days ago—and he signed it and crowed about it to the mistress!”
The housekeeper had fine eyes, deep and lustrous, but they were brimming now with indignant tears.
What she said about the potential scandal of such a will was true enough. In a small country community, there was no need for an actual open accusation of infidelity. The meaning of Knellys’ comment, that Clara had the best of reasons for killing Kelsoe, suddenly became apparent. The young man might have compromised her hopes of inheritance, and no doubt Candless had talked to his friend, Knellys, of the Jesmond family testament. An unusual provision in the will, an explicit mention of the possibility—that would set the tongues clacking. Why, the gossips would say, had Sir Antony seen fit to make such a condition at all, unless he had grounds to suspect that his widow might dishonor his memory? The provision in the will was practically a guarantee of notoriety.
Had there been anything about Lady Jesmond’s conduct to have provoked this piece of cruelty? It was possible that Sir Antony was an elderly household tyrant, an aged British Othello, eaten up with groundless suspicions of a young and still-beautiful wife. Why will old men marry lovely young women if they then spend the rest of their days in an agony of distrust?
I pondered also upon the curious fact that Sir Antony had made this proviso known. Usually old men who feared betrayal were desperately anxious to cover up the fact. “There’s no fool like an old fool” is a harsh saying, yet a common one. Indeed, Cyriack himself had used it to Lady Jesmond after Kelsoe’s funeral. But perhaps Sir Antony had suspected his wife of something, and wanted to bring pressure to bear upon her behavior, and this may have been a means of warning her.
I tried to console the woman. “Well, it’s all over now, for young Cyriack lies in the churchyard yonder. Sir Antony will have to make a new will, and I suppose your mistress may yet have children, in any case?”
The housekeeper gave a short and bitter laugh. “No chance of that, Doctor. Sir Antony will keep to his own room! He cannot do the business, excuse me, my lord, as the old country people say. No,” said Mrs. Romey, “there’ll be no son to follow him now. He has a cousin in Virginia—that’s the nearest heir.”
“But he’ll have to make some allowance for your mistress. And surely he will make a new will after Cyriack’s death?”
“Oh aye, there’ll be some provision to keep her body and soul together, I suppose. But I pray there’s no lying rubbish in it to shame her, like the last time!”
The housekeeper sat down for a few minutes, and her indignation gradually subsided. She rose, resuming a more suitable impassivity, and turned as if to leave the room, but then seemed to remember her duties.
“Do you want anything else, my lord? There’s a nice piece of Cheddar cheese. I could toast a couple of slices for you in a chafing-dish, with a little ale and butter?”
“No, thank you, Mrs. Romey.” Though somehow I was developing an appetite for these country dishes. Another evening, perhaps, I might ask for cheese cooked in a silver chafing-dish in the old-fashioned way. Yes, upon reflection, it seemed rather appetizing.
But Mrs. Romey had left the room and my mind was occupied with the strange course of events. How did such a testament fit into the drama that had been unfolding beneath this roof? Had Sir Antony suspected his wife of infidelity at the time it was signed, ten days previously?
Was there something which might have been connected with the sequence of murderous events in this household?
The will had been signed just before the death of young Kelsoe.
CHAPTER 18
Lady Jesmond looked up from the depths of her armchair. I had knocked on the door of her room, and been admitted, to find Sandys already there.
“Ah, Malfine, I was just taking her ladyship’s pulse. Madam, you must not allow yourself to become excited.”
For Clara Jesmond was already looking flustered and her agitation increased at my next words. “Now, madam, I have spoken to Mrs. Romey and she has told me about the will your husband had made. I will not go into the distressing details of the provisions of that document, but you must tell us the truth of the matter; it is very probably, though I admit not certainly, the best way out of the situation in which you find yourself. What happened here? I suggest we begin with the arrival in this house of Dr. John Kelsoe.”
She had stopped weeping. Perhaps, I thought, with a touch of my usual cynicism, perhaps the real desperation of her situation had come home, and she knew that there were no subterfuges left.
“Very well, Lord Ambrose. The first thing is, that I do not know why Dr. Kelsoe was brought to this house. I do not believe it was truly for my husband’s health, for he seemed to pay but little attention to that, yet I think
it was for some scientific matter, for Dr. Kelsoe was always studying tables—quantities and calendars and so forth.”
“Calendars?”
This was from Sandys.
“Yes, is that strange? I am sure that they were calendars. I looked over his shoulder once or twice and saw dates and the phases of the moon marked on his paper. And there were lists of things lying around in his room…”
“A vial of mercury? Cakes of glass?”
“Why, yes, how strange—I do recall those—and saltpeter and coals…and saffron…some quite ordinary things and others I had never heard of before.”
“Did you ask him about them?”
“Yes, Dr. Sandys, I did, but he begged me not to press him. He said it was nothing, it would come to naught and he would have no more to do with it.”
“Were those his words?”
“Yes, I recall them now.”
She stopped for a moment, and seemed to tilt her head, almost as if she listened to a dead voice.
“But that conversation…”
“Yes?”
“It was about other matters altogether.”
“Please tell us, Lady Jesmond,” said Sandys. “You stand accused of murder; only the truth can help you now.”
Ah, Murdoch Sandys, what an idealist you are, under that hardened Scottish medico’s exterior!
But I said nothing, and she went on.
“Very well. I must admit that he, Dr. John Kelsoe…”
I took a guess. Guess? Damned certainty. Coop up a healthy young man in a house with a bored and beautiful woman whose elderly husband does not share her bed, shut them off from society, and why, ’tis a racing certainty they’ll be tossing about between the sheets from sheer boredom, if for no more delicate feelings. Though there are many folk nowadays too mealy-mouthed to admit it, and young blood runs colder than it did in my day.
“You and Dr. Kelsoe, madam…”
And Clara Jesmond had to dress it all up a little.
“John Kelsoe was in love with me.”
She got up out of her chair, as though confused for the moment by embarrassment, and a drift of scent reached me as she moved, an odor sweet and flowerlike, yet a stale, weary perfume. The room seemed airless; the talk of love something that came from another life.
“Please go on, Lady Jesmond.”
She pulled back the closed curtains, and looked out of the window for a moment; put her hand to the latch of the casement, but did not open it. She then turned back into the room, and I saw that there were tears standing in her eyes, yet she did not break into weeping.
“John told me a few days after he came here that he had fallen passionately in love with me at first sight. For a while at least he desired nothing more than to be under the same roof as myself, and decided that he would say nothing and love me silently. But he could not carry out this resolution, and once, when we were in the drawing room alone, he fell upon my skirts and declared that he could not go a day further without speaking to me of his passion. And we became lovers, for a few days…and nights. He was utterly in love with me, you see. It was so…winning!”
Yes. it is the ultimate flattery, to be completely adored, to bask in absolute power, to have one’s every whim a lover’s command. Irresistible, to a bored, neglected creature, man or woman. Irresistible to Clara Jesmond.
“And was that how it was at the time of his death?”
“No.”
She stood upright in front of the window and suddenly seemed less dreamy, as though there were another, stronger woman within her skin. Odds bobs! There was more to Clara Jesmond than I had thought.
“I had broken off with him.”
She crossed the room again. The window remained unopened and the only air in the chamber seemed to be in the movement of her crumpled silks.
She flung herself down in the armchair and drew back into its depths.
“What had happened? Had your husband discovered the truth?”
“No, not then, though he did later. No, it was something else. Well, I suppose I must tell you.”
She raised her head and looked at me almost with defiance.
“John Kelsoe wanted me to run away with him, to leave this house and go north somewhere, and live as man and wife. ‘To spend my life with you!’—that’s what he said. Precious little life he had left, as it turned out!”
She turned her head with its great tangle of fair hair toward the window, and murmured her next words.
“But I refused.”
There was a pause.
“Your feelings for your husband—they were the cause?”
“I have to answer that question honestly. Otherwise we shall never understand this business at all, for our sentiments are at the heart of the matter, are they not?”
Yes, she was a more complicated woman than I had thought, as became increasingly apparent while I listened to her.
“Very well, the truth. It was not because of my feelings toward my husband, for they scarcely exist—they did once, but they are long dead. And nor was it fear of immorality, for that had not prevented me from becoming John’s mistress. No…”
There was another pause. Not a word was uttered. The old house seemed to creak and shift.
There are moments when time stands still. As when a terrible truth is uttered.
“You must know, Lord Ambrose, that I would not run off with a penniless man!”
There—the truth was out.
So cold and harsh it sounded! She immediately began to justify it.
I had almost forgotten Mrs. Romey, but she had come out of a small side-room, probably my lady’s dressing-room, during this exchange, and she came forward now as if to defend her charge. But Clara Jesmond continued with her own self-defense.
“Just consider, Lord Ambrose, here in this house I am Lady Jesmond. I have a position in society, I have everything I wish for—and with John Kelsoe I would have had nothing! He would have to find employment, and then we would have had to live off whatever meager earnings he could get… I am not used to such shifts, Lord Ambrose. I am not such a young woman anymore.”
“So you refused to leave with him?”
“Yes. And I talked it over with my…with Mrs. Romey. She counseled me not to go. She said—”
The housekeeper seemed about to intervene, but Lady Jesmond gestured to her to remain silent and continued with her account of the unhappy passions of John Kelsoe, M.D., deceased.
“She said we had only to wait till Sir Antony died. That it could not be long—that his health was not good. Then I would inherit everything and I could marry whom I pleased, and I need sacrifice nothing.”
“But your husband’s will…”
“Yes, yes. Antony suspected something, and I think that is why he made that will, for it meant giving up everything if I should remarry. Or even if I should—” She paused.
“If you should take a lover.”
This was Sandys, plain-speaking.
“So you rejected John Kelsoe?”
“Yes. He pleaded and pleaded with me, but I got angry with him. I told him I did not want a poverty-stricken creature such as he! Oh, I am so ashamed now of my words, but you see, I have known poverty in my life, Lord Ambrose, and I do not want it again, I assure you! It may be easy for those who have never known it to preach at me.”
“I have absolutely no intention of preaching, Lady Jesmond. But then, what happened afterward? Did he accept what you said?”
“He appeared to. But it was the next day that he died.”
“So he had a motive for suicide? The woman he adored had rejected him.”
“I know it was suicide. He left me a note.”
She got up, went to a portable writing desk that sat upon a cabinet, turned the key in its gold lock, opened a drawer and extracted a sheet of paper. “This was the place where we exchanged messages. I found this paper here, after he died. He must have placed it here before he took that dreadful poison.”
It was a short
message, and a strange one: love you to death and beyond: I cannot persuade you to be mine, but I can give you all you desire. That you shall have, I promise.
There was a scrawled J. at the end.
CHAPTER 19
The attitude of Sir Antony was the biggest obstacle in clearing Lady Jesmond from the charges against her, for when I intimated to him that the truth might be the only resource left, he was mightily offended and disappeared up the staircase to his room like some stringy old animal retreating to a den, its teeth still snarling at the world. Of Charnock, there was no sign.
Now matters were at such a pass that I determined to roust out all the secrets that this strange household tried so hard to keep hidden. Getting up in the middle of the night, my first purpose was to explore the attic at the top of the house—not the room where poor Kelsoe had died, but the other, with the new padlock upon the door.
“Sandys!” said I, rousing him from slumber.
He cursed with some Scottish oath, recondite and alarming, but followed me.
We slipped up the staircase.
As we neared the top of the stairs, I fancied I heard the old boards creaking ahead of us. Upon the landing the moonlight outlined the door of Kelsoe’s old room, standing wide open, no doubt as it had been left for the passage of his coffin through the doorway.
I held Sandys back.
Silence.
Then, again, a slight shifting sound.
Something else.
Some hand sliding a foul and secret poison into a hiding-place?
It was from close by.
Not from within the room itself.
I suddenly leaped forward and pulled the door toward me. Someone stumbled behind it, falling against the wall as if trying to vanish through it.
I seized the throat of the figure. Fat, fleshy. Not a ghost, most certainly; this living creature was distinctly and unpleasantly alive beneath my hand.
The intruder and I spun toward the window, where I allowed him to fall upon the floor, his face upturned in the moonlight shining full into Kelsoe’s attic quarters.